The Chinese aren’t just flying in record numbers, they’re falling in love all over
again with the preferred method of travel in the 20th century, as hundreds of millions
of Chinese acquire middle class status and the extra income to afford cars.
This is presenting a relatively new challenge: heavy congestion on their motorways.
So to tackle this problem, China has set itself apart from the rest of the world by embracing
high speed rail at a breakneck pace.
It’s goal to build a system with more than 35,000 kilometers of track is now more than
half complete, making it one of the most expensive megaprojects in history.
The other reason behind this plan is to allow people to commute to work from much farther
distances than they could than if they had to drive, making high speed rail the key to
urbanization.
And because China has as much high speed rail as every other country combined, it will have
more and more of the world’s largest cities.
In fact, of the top 10 urban areas on Earth with more than 20 million people, three of
them are in China—and those cities are growing so fast that two of the three weren’t in
the top 10 last year.
The explosion in high speed rail in China is especially mind-blowing when you consider
that it was first introduced there in 2007, that’s less than a decade ago.
Since then, daily ridership has grown from 237,000 to over 2.5 million.
To accommodate all those passengers, it’s Railway Ministry has swelled, and now has
the same number of employees as there are civilians working for the entire United States
government.
China got to this point under the heavy-handed leadership of Minister of Railways Liu Zhijun,
or “Great Leap Liu,” who pushed his patriotic workers in shifts around the clock to plan
and build rail lines as fast as possible.
He famously said, “to achieve a great leap, a generation must be sacrificed.”
Liu meant his workers, but when a poorly designed signaling system caused a dramatic crash on
a viaduct high above a valley in 2011, it was clear that some of the first generation
of passengers would be sacrificed as well.
News anchor: “China’s railway system has been plagued with problems including corruption
and quality concerns.
Authorities have come under fire for the way they’ve handled the accident, especially
when they buried several carriages before carrying out an investigation.”
Bryce: But, despite the 40 deaths - and more than 200 injuries - in the Wenzhou train collision,
the attempts of the government to cover the disaster up, and Great Leap Liu’s subsequent
fall from grace, the high speed rail boom in China has roared on and the system is now
considered to be among the safest modes of transportation in the entire world.
It also leads the globe in annual ridership, has the longest single service at 2,400 km
from Harbin to Wuhan and has the fastest commercially operated train with peak speeds of 430 km/h.
Now, having successfully linked up much of its own country with high speed rail, China
aims to do the same for the rest of the world.
It is building systems in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and South America, and is bidding on projects
in Russia, Brazil, Myanmar, and the United States.
Thank you very much for tuning in.
Until next time, for The Daily Conversation, I’m Bryce Plank.