Anyone who has ever whiled away a few hours in a Chinese traffic jam can attest to the country’s need to invest in trains. Due to a simple lack of capacity, China’s rail passenger volumes grew at a compound annual rate of just more than 5 per cent between 2001 and 2010. That is well below real gross domestic product, at 11 per cent, and nowhere near air passenger volumes, at 15 per cent.
The problem is in the speed of investment now, as China attempts to catch up by building the world’s largest high-speed rail network. This is basically a good idea: not only does it lubricate economic activity, it frees the existing infrastructure to carry more cargo (at the moment, four-fifths of freight goes by road and canal). But last weekend’s fatal collision, and the regular power outages on the new Beijing-Shanghai line, demonstrate that developers are cutting corners. China laid its first HSR track in 2007; by March this year, it had 4,576km in operation. By 2020, it is proposing to build about 25,000km more. (The earth’s circumference is 40,000km).
The incidents should have two effects. First, to slow the pace of the build-out. One of Premier Wen Jiabao’s favourite adjectives, used in connection with China’s unbalanced, investment-led economy, is “unsustainable”. The wreckage in Wenzhou illustrates that graphically. Second, it should threaten China’s plans to export more HSR goods and knowhow. Contrast the country’s already-blemished HSR safety record with that of Japan, without a single fatality or injury after 47 years.