China's harmony express

On 30 June 2011, China opened a landmark rail link between its two largest cities, Beijing and Shanghai. The 1,318 km line, which crosses seven provinces and shrinks the journey between Beijing South Railway Station and Shanghai Hongqiao Railway Station to under five hours – half that of conventional trains – is the show piece of China’s burgeoning high-speed rail network.

Costing US$32.5 billion and built in just 38 months, the line, which connects the Bohai Sea Rim and the affluent Yangtze River Delta, opened in time for the Chinese Communist Party’s 90th birthday celebrations. Ninety departures a day in each direction are scheduled for the route, which Teshu Singh, a researcher with the New Delhi-based Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies, has called “the longest and also the most expensive high-speed rail connection in the world.”

The network itself, which consists of four north-south lines and four east-west lines, was recently likened to the US space programme as a showcase for national engineering prowess by Los Angeles Times journalist David Pierson. Pierson quoted Zhou Xiaozheng, a sociology professor at People’s University in Beijing, as saying: “This has become a matter of national face. We love building gigantic projects.”

Officially begun in 2004, when China’s State Council passed the Medium- and Long-Term Railway Network Plan, the country’s vision of a fast, integrated rail network actually dates from a feasibility study in the early 1990s. China’s high-speed rail network is now the world’s most extensive, with some 8,358 km of track in service as of January 2011, including 2,197 km able to support speeds of up to 350 km/h. Some 773 high-speed ‘Harmony Express’ trains, with a passenger capacity of 845,000, travel across the country each day.

According to Lan Xinzhen, writing in the Beijing Review, the goal of the Ministry of Railways (MOR) is to create a half- to one-hour transport network between provincial capitals and their satellite cities and a one- to two-hour network between neighbouring capital cities.

“After the completion of these major railway lines, it will take no more than eight hours to travel from Beijing to the majority of provincial capitals,” wrote Lan.

With up to 100,000 people working on each line, the entire high-speed network is expected to be completed by 2020. By then, according to MOR figures, more than 50,000 km will be in service giving 90 per cent of the country’s population access to rail travel.

The rail construction programme has its critics. The Beijing-Shanghai line alone is the most expensive engineering project in China’s history, surpassing even the Three Gorges Dam in cost.  Recent reports suggest that investment in the programme as a whole will total a staggering US$600 bn for 2011-2015 alone. Though rail investment served as a useful stimulus package during the recent global financial crisis, absorbing excess labour and channeling work to stressed companies, it has nevertheless been criticised as excessive. Stephen Roach at Morgan Stanley called the sums involved, which in 2008 accounted for 45 percent of GDP, “ridiculous” and “unsustainable” for any economy.

Professor Zhao Jian of Northern Transport University told China Daily that the cost of building high-speed lines was three times that of standard lines and that maintenance costs were likewise higher. He also questioned the economic value of the time saved on journeys that extended into night, as did many in China. He noted that in smaller countries, by comparison, passengers could travel between most major cities within two hours and reap significant economic value from the time saved during daylight.

Patronage on some lines is reportedly low, due to the cost of fares, with occupancy rates of under 50 percent not uncommon. In response, MOR announced that it would cut the speed of the new Beijing-Shanghai service from 380 kph to 300 kph, with the electricity savings passed on through lower ticket prices. The lower speed is also said to be a safety precaution.

Professor Wang Lan, of Beijing’s China Building Materials Academy, claims that due to poor quality control in Mainland China, the use of low-quality fly ash and other materials was “almost inevitable” in the construction of high-speed rail tracks. He told the South China Morning Post that given a catalytic function almost opposite that of good fly ash, poor quality fly ash could weaken railway foundations and halve a railway’s lifespan.

Zhu Ming, a researcher at Southwest Jiaotoing University, who has conducted on-site experiments was even more pessimistic. The South China Morning Post quotes him as saying: “Quality problems with Chinese high-speed railways will arise in five years. I’m not talking about small problems, but big problems... When that happens, the miracle of Chinese high-speed rail will be reduced to dust.”

Proponents counter that the new trains have freed up China’s congested traditional rail system for an estimated 50 million tonnes of additional freight, which is allowing coal companies and shippers to switch from expensive road transport to rail for heavy goods. (Such is the demand that even today goods movements are suspended during the Spring Festival, May Day and National Day holidays to make way for passenger carriages).

They add that the high-speed electric trains will increase the country’s energy security and that they have already spurred tourism and regional economic growth.

John Scales, the Beijing-based transport sector coordinator for the World Bank, wrote a report that was, on the whole, favourable to China’s rail project, saying: “It satisfies most of the success factors, particularly on its busiest passenger corridors where existing lines are congested.” However, he warned that as the network reached areas of lower demand the test of affordability would be more difficult for passengers to meet.

“By around 2015, China is likely to have built a new mass transport mode on a scale unequalled anywhere else in the world,” concluded researcher Roger Irvine after investigating the subject at Beijing’s Tsinghua University as part of a PhD on China’s future.

“Whether it will prove to be a catalyst for further growth or a monument to a regime that overreached itself remains to be seen.”

A great line in superlatives

China’s pursuit of fast rail has led to some astounding feats, including:

• The construction of Tianxingzhou bridge across the Yangtzi river at Wuhan – said to be the world’s largest and widest railway-highway bridge.
• The 1.6 km Dashengguan bridge – the world’s first six-lane railway bridge – across the Yangzi river at Nanjing.
• Almost 80 km of elevated track on the Zhengzhou-Xian line, which is claimed to constitute the world’s longest bridge.
• The building of more than 30 ultra-modern rail stations with a combined floor area of almost 5 million sqm.
• Commercial trains running between Guangzhou and Wuhan at an average speed of 313 kph – far higher than the previous fastest commercial train, France’s TGV. MOR claims to be working on technology for a new generation of trains to enable speeds in excess of 500 kph.
• The exporting of rail expertise. China is already building rail lines in Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Venezuela and is negotiating deals with Brazil, India, Russia, South Africa and the US.
• More extravagant plans to connect China’s high-speed network with cities as far away as Berlin, London, Moscow, New Delhi and Singapore. Researcher Roger Irvine notes: “One route might connect Kunming in China’s southwest with Singapore; another could link Urumqi to Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, and possibly extend to Germany; a third could cross Russia from China’s northeast”.

By Vaughan Yarwood 2011

Images: (top to bottom)
1. High-speed train in Qinshen
2. Map of China's high-speed network
3. High-speed train at Guangzhou station