Posted on 05/26/2019 8:32:31 PM PDT by Zhang Fei
On a recent weekday morning, Liu Ai’jun boarded one of eight daily high-speed rail (HSR) services between Urumqi, capital of China’s north-western Xinjiang region, and Hami, an oasis town 614 kilometers to the east.
The trip, along the longest and most expensive line in the country’s HSR network, took just three hours and cost RMB 167 ($24). Previously Liu, a self-employed elevator salesman and technician, used to rely on infrequent and expensive flights between the two cities. Before the new HSR line was completed in 2014, the train between Urumqi and Hami took seven hours.
“If you’re not in a rush, why not take the train,” Liu says. “The train is a lot more relaxing [than flying].”
The convenience to Liu has come at a considerable cost to state-owned China Railway Corp., which over the past decade has built the world’s largest HSR network with 25,000 kilometers of track. Today, just a decade after construction began, two-thirds of the world’s HSR tracks have been laid in China.
The December 2009 debut of China’s first long-distance high-speed rail service, which raced 1,100 kilometers between the southern city of Guangzhou and Wuhan in central China in just three hours, was a dramatic example of the Chinese Communist Party’s debt-fueled response to the global financial crisis.
In the decade to 2016, Chinese corporate debt levels rose from 100 percent of gross domestic product to 190 percent, or RMB 141 trillion. As of March, China Railway’s total debts stood at RMB 5 trillion. According to Li Hongchang, as much as 80 percent of the company’s debt burden is related to HSR construction. For critics, the HSR network is a debt crisis waiting to happen, dependent on unsustainable government subsidies with many lines incapable of repaying the interest on their debt, let alone principal.
(Excerpt) Read more at ozy.com ...
China has also squandered tens of billions of dollars building huge “ghost cities” that sit empty and rotting as well as building the infrastructure and then producing second rate electric vehicles. The capital has been squandered and the debts remain. Unless they export to the US and other countries with hard currency, its becoming increasingly difficult for their banks to service this debt and maintain the value of their currency. China is a good example of how capital is squandered when economic decisions are made by a central authority for political purposes. In the US it was catastrophic when the government forced banks to make loans and mortgages to people who were poor credit risks.
I rode to Beijing from Shenyang on the high speed rail, it took about four hours. In the open areas of the country, the train moves around 250 km/hour, it doesn’t feel like you are going that fast.
Red China is in an ideal place for trying to pull this off. Environmental and legal considerations are not an issue, buying out current property owners is trivial and cheap, no shortage of cheap coolie labor, and commerce moves from city center to city center, and it STILL loses big money.
My wife is from China, I saw a graveyard of electric buses and their charging equipment the last time we were there. There were numerous electric cars and scooters there as well.
There have been a lot of people waxing poetic on Free Republic lately about the glories of Communist China’s High Speed Rail Systems. (note: not saying you are one of them)
The communists get to control what money is spent and where the trains go. If it is subsidized because it isn’t profitable, they simply don’t care.
A lot of people are just fine with that and think that is how we should do it here in the USA too. They don’t realize that if the government wants to simply relocate you, in Communist China, they can just do it. The citizens don’t have a legal recourse (on paper they probably do, but that is all it is)
I respect their ability to build them, but that is as far as it goes. I won’t be a fan boy for a Communist regime. They put a smiley face on, but they are still a country that murdered tens of millions of their own citizens and will do it again if they feel they need too.
In the USA, we don’t want the government telling us where we can go, when we can go, how much it will cost us, and tracking our movements every step of the way. We prefer the freedom of highways and our own cars.
As with the autobahn, let’s watch and learn and steal what works.
The fundamental question is: does an investment in a project end up generating more benefit than the cost? The interstate cost a lot, but boosted GDP big time for decades.... The Chinese have money to burn. If you fear devaluation, then massive infrastructure is a great investment.
Good read. Went to the article. It was fine.
I like HSR. I use it to travel to Guangzhou quite often. To Beijing and Shanghai I typically fly.
An extra 20 RMB gives me first class treatment. I like that.
Everyone on FR is all about how America is great. Rah rah. Meanwhile they are totally oblivious to all the changes going on around them. Change is good, but if you are blind to it, you suffer the possibility of getting “blind-sided”.
Last time I took a train in the USA it was pathetic. Everyone was old, ugly and very... very rude. The A/C hardly worked, the bathrooms were as bad as Chinese public toilets, and it was expensive to boot.
Back to the article...
Articles that discuss the financial arguments pro and con for any Chinese based business are unreliable. As public financial information is never correct.
“Ai’jun”
Apostrophe isn’t needed.
381.5 miles in three hours? That’s an average speed of 127 mph. Kinda slow for HSR, although not as slow as the previous 54-mph average speed.
You don’t want the government tracking your moments so you DRIVE? Ha! US police routinely use license plate scanners that can track you. Do you use a transponder to pay electronic tolls? Guess what they know where you’re going. Do you normally carry a cell phone when you drive? It tracks your movements, every time it pings a cell tower - not to mention if you use a GPS service. Even if you’re not carrying a cell phone, just about any car made in the last two decades has cell connectivity built in. When you buy gas do you pay with a credit card or do you only use less traceable cash? Any driver in the US who thinks they’re somehow free from surveillance is out of their minds.
That’s all true. And far more easily facilitated by the government-built interstates.
I don’t think the Chinese ‘get’ the finer points of capitalism...
I miss Willie Green.
Well said. A communist government such as China can do whatever they want. In spite of free market reforms, China still has a totalitarian government, and people have few legal rights.
They can get you to the gulags in record times.
Bullet train
Earthquake
Problem !
IIRC he was banned at some point, but his home page is now active,
“Last time I took a train in the USA it was pathetic. Everyone was old, ugly and very... very rude. The A/C hardly worked, the bathrooms were as bad as Chinese public toilets, and it was expensive to boot.”
In the USA trains are for COAL, not people.
The Interstate Highway System goes EVERYWHERE and everywhere in between. Add the state, county, and local roads and you can go anywhere you want to. Once you get to where you are going, you have your personal local transportation with you.
High speed rail is a liberal pipe dream. It doesn’t fit for the USA.
Americans want to ride their own horses, not a wagon in a wagon train.
Passenger rail can ONLY exist as a government subsidy. People insist on seats, windows, heat, roadbeds that won’t rupture your kidneys, water, food, bathrooms, and all these other fripperies. All this costs extra, and Steamboat Willie, all the dimmest democrats, and Communists, refuse to admit it.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.