From Overseas Press

China: Betting big on high-speed rail

(chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2010-08-10 16:25

The railway system may be China's most impressive infrastructural improvement over the last 30 years, since the country "has gone from having one of the world's largest rail networks to also having one of the best," said an article in Time magazine that will be published next week.

However, according to the article, Chinese authorities were not satisfied and will spend $120 billion on railway construction this year. "The most ambitious focus of that investment is the expansion of the high-speed passenger rail."

With this quick development, China's railway may compete with the US and Europe, whose infrastructure is aging fast. Yang Zhongmin, the director general of the Ministry of Railways Development and Planning Department, said that the "rail development fell behind the national rate of growth" so that it has to go faster. And the construction of rail will "help fulfill a long-term goal of developing China's western regions, which have not kept pace with the eastern provinces and their export-led boom." "It will push western development much faster," said Jia Limin, a professor of railway science at Beijing Jiaotong University.

But the article also showed some critics' concerns that "with more than half of Chinese population still rural, spending billions on fancy rail projects is excessive -- particularly as it comes a mere decade after the country embarked on building an equally impressive highway system." "Although construction costs are cheap in China, high-speed railways are also much more expensive to build and maintain than standard railroads."

The investment may incur "heavy debts" in building a much better rail system. Although "massive infrastructural investments have helped China become the first major economy to pull out of the global crisis, it could become a heavy burden if the recovery stumbles," according to the article.

But China may "cushion the risk by exporting its rail expertise." Beijing wants to "build a high-speed grid that would link China to Europe, and Chinese firms have begun to win key rail projects overseas."