China's Bullet trains

Second part of my series on the rapid growth in China's transportation and it's facts and impacts.

TRAINS :

This Chinese bullet train, which has the world’s fastest average speed, connects Guangzhou, the southern coastal manufacturing center, to Wuhan, deep in the interior. In a little more than three hours, it travels 664 miles, comparable to the distance from Boston to southern Virginia. That is less time than Amtrak’s fastest train, the Acela, takes to go from Boston just to New York.

China’s lavish new rail system is a response to a failure of central planning six years ago.

After China joined the World Trade Organization in November 2001, exports and manufacturing soared. Electricity generation failed to keep up because the railway ministry had not built enough rail lines or purchased enough locomotives to haul the coal needed to run new power plants.

By 2004, the government was turning off the power to some factories up to three days a week to prevent blackouts in residential areas. 

Officials drafted a plan to move much of the nation’s passenger traffic onto high-speed routes by 2020, freeing existing tracks for more freight. Then the global financial crisis hit in late 2008. Faced with mass layoffs at export factories, China ordered that the new rail system be completed by 2012 instead of 2020, throwing more than $100 billion in stimulus at the projects.

The economic case for expanding the rail network is clear-cut. During a country's development phase, total demand for transport tends to grow faster than per capita income. 

But some critics say China is putting too much emphasis on high-speed rail lines capable of accommodating speeds of up to 350 km an hour... Zhao Jian, a professor at Jiaotong University in Beijing who specialised in rail economics, is scathing of the "blind pursuit of speed". He says China could have built an extra 30,000 km of conventional track with the money saved from "extravagant" high-speed lines. 

China, he argues, does not have the technological experience to be sure of operating such lines safely. Moreover, high-speed trains gobble energy and subsidies.

China ofcourse, is rightly proud of the giant strides it is making. It is offering to build a high-speed rail line in California and is bidding for a contract to link Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia.

Sources :
NY Times, China Sees Growth Engine in a Web of Fast Trains
Reuters, ANALYSIS - China banks on rail boom to fire inland growth
China Daily, China building world's largest high-speed rail network