The growth of China's High Speed Rail network

[Rover]

The B1M
How China out-built the world on high-speed rail.

Compares China's amount of HS Rail to other nations. Points out the cost savings in construction to that of the US.

 

[me_little_me]

It's easy when you can "re-educate" the NIMBYs after seizing their property like what the U.S. did to native populations when giving their land to railroads in the 19th century back when people's rights, environmental issues, and other such things had no meaning. And, when one runs a dictatorship, the only ones who are allowed to have power are subject to the decisions of the ruling bureau and if that group decides to build roads, airports or trains (easier to control people's movement with trains or planes), it is done or those with lesser power find they have joined those with none.

 

[neroden]

That's an excuse and it's not true.

I don't know if you've followed the history of Chinese eminent domain, but it turns out their society is extremely legalistic (always has been really). They have to buy out "holdouts" the same way we do in the US. Single houses will delay construction of projects for years. (The HSR just put viaducts OVER them in some cases.)

The big thing is that they have one political party which is all in on building HSR; they don't have a bunch of cadres and apparatchiks saying "rail is stupid, we should build more highways instead". That's the difference. (In authoritarian dictatorships where they DO have that -- and there are some! -- they are not building HSR either.)

On other issues, like getting rid of coal and establishing solar & wind power everywhere, there IS dissent among the ranks of the CCP officials, and as a result that has been going a lot slower and with backsliding. The big thing is that in China, *nobody is actually AGAINST passenger rail*, unlike here.

France, Spain, Morocco, Taiwan, Japan have all built HSR. Democracies, monarchies, dictatorships, the big difference is that they didn't have organized, powerful *rail-hating* groups. We do. So do several South American authoritarian countries which have failed to build HSR.

 

[flitcraft]

And the Chinese rail system has been a game changer there for ordinary folks. I travel to China frequently and speak enough Chinese to converse with strangers, and I am always taken with how much HSR has become a part of how average Chinese people visit scenic parts of China, keep in touch with relatives, etc.

I should comment that it is true that China does has eminent domain rules, and is required to pay compensation to those whose property gets ultimately taken, but the compensation is not generous, and hardly compensates for people who lose their entire village and community. Getting a new apartment somewhere else, away from family and friends, isn't really much compensation. (Although the US did pretty much the same thing in the 1950's to folks when we built the federal highway system straight through neighborhoods that were forever destroyed.) I will also say that the legal system was more protective of Chinese citizens rights twenty years ago than today. I recall seeing a program on CCTV Chinese state television back in about 2005 about a band of lawyers defending villagers' rights when the government wanted to tear down their village to put up some kind of public works project. Even at the time, I found it amazing that the tenor of the program was favorable to the villagers and the lawyers working to defend their community. This absolutely wouldn't happen today, unfortunately. Xi has stifled any hint of dissent, tragically.

 

[Ziv]

When I was in Beijing I loved to wander the backstreets (houtongs) and just observe. One thing I noted early on was a red circular stenciled "graffiti" with a couple characters that had been sprayed on several surfaces of some of the houtongs. I asked about it and it was the Party notice that that houtong had been condemned and would be razed within 90 days. There is a process similar to eminent domain but since few people actually owned the land they had a freehold type of contract on (usually limited to 70 years), they usually lose when the Party wanted their land. Very few people actually own land inside a city, the State owns it and leases it back to them for a stipulated time. When the Party bought the land they only paid for the pro-rated amount of the value, so if the family had been there for 50 years they got 20/70th of the purported value. But the process was pretty complicated because Chinese Land Law is really involved.
Upside is that 'backwards' sections of a city could be torn down after several years of planning and a couple months of notice of eviction to the people that live there. The people that were being evicted had usually known for a year or more that the eviction process was probably coming, but some claimed it was a surprise. Take that for what it is worth. The fact that some of the people would talk to me about something that sensitive was interesting in and of itself.
Downside of course is that the people that have lived there for a couple generations have to move on with short notice.
Conversely when I showed a pamphlet given away (at Tiananmen Square) by a distraught father that lost his son in PLA basic training the staff at the hotel ran away and wouldn't come out of hiding until I had been gone for some time. So there are things in China that they can complain about and things that they are not supposed to even see, let alone speak of. The father was grabbed by a squad of police that popped out of a hidden door and pulled him in with them in less than a minute. I got one of the pamphlets that were blown downwind when they nabbed the old gent.
Simplifying eminent domain here would simplify improving rail lines, but I am not sure that we would like the collateral damage.
China has some large advantages when it comes to building train lines.

It's easy when you can "re-educate" the NIMBYs after seizing their property like what the U.S. did to native populations when giving their land to railroads in the 19th century back when people's rights, environmental issues, and other such things had no meaning. And, when one runs a dictatorship, the only ones who are allowed to have power are subject to the decisions of the ruling bureau and if that group decides to build roads, airports or trains (easier to control people's movement with trains or planes), it is done or those with lesser power find they have joined those with none.

 

[west point]

Notice the 3 and 2 seating on the China trains. Might be a very tight fit for many westerners ?

 

[jis]

Notice the 3 and 2 seating on the China trains. Might be a very tight fit for many westerners ?

3x2 seating is very common in Asia in the standard/lower class. Most Asians are not as huge as Americans, who are large partly by nature and partly by excessive consumption and poor diet

 

[me_little_me]

3x2 seating is very common in Asia in the standard/lower class. Most Asians are not as huge as Americans, who are large partly by nature and partly by excessive consumption and poor diet

No insults please. We are just too short for our weight and insulting us because of our height being insufficient can get you an ADA complaint.

And, yes, this is related to the topic because it references "growth".

 

[Ziv]

... Most Asians are not as huge as Americans, who are large partly by nature and partly by excessive consumption and poor diet

I resemble that comment!
LOL!

 

[MARC Rider]

3x2 seating is very common in Asia in the standard/lower class. Most Asians are not as huge as Americans, who are large partly by nature and partly by excessive consumption and poor diet

It used to be that most Asians were smaller than Americans because of the poor diet on the part of the Asians. Now the relative sizes are the same, but the Americans are the ones with the poor diet!

By the way, this wasn't always just about Asians and Americans. In 1918, when American soldiers started arriving at the Western Front, the British, French, and Germans were all amazed at how huge those Yankee farm boys were. I guess that hard work, country living, and abundant food relative to Europe made a difference.

 

[Tlcooper93]

Traveling to Hong Kong to visit my fiance's family hopefully this winter.
Definitely visiting West Kowloon Station and going to try to grab a soft sleeper on the overnight bullet train to Beijing. Hopefully she joins me...

I'm told its hard to fathom the Chinese HSR system until I visit and ride it in person. Definitely looking forward to that.

Don't want to get too off topic, but Patriot act did a very interesting episode detailing in part how Coca-cola is "invading" China and recently, there has been a spike in obesity. Maybe we won't see 3-2 seats for long.

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=patriot+act+obesity

 

[coventry801]

The Chinese HSR is sucking blood from every Chinese tax payer. It's a black hole and you don't even know how big the debt is because, there is never a transparency and truth from Communist Party.

 

[Tlcooper93]

The Chinese HSR is sucking blood from every Chinese tax payer. It's a black hole and you don't even know how big the debt is because, there is never a transparency and truth from Communist Party.

This is a common point I hear, but I have never actually seen any evidence to back it up.
If we don't know how big the debt is, how do we know if there is actually a mountain of debt to begin with? Do you have any (reputable and conclusive) sources for your rather bold claims? The most common number I saw tossed around was 770B, but most articles often followed this point with admitting that the older lines began paying for themselves. I read that 5 out of 15 pay for themselves pre-covid.

Continued expansion at this rapid a rate of course would rack up a bill, but the system itself (if they stopped expanding) being a black hole of debt is another claim entirely.

Perhaps China sees this as an investment that pays back in alternate ways. There IS evidence to suggest that China's unbelievable growth in the past 20 years can be attributed in part to their HSR system.
The US interstates also sucked (and continue to do so) a lot of money, but we see it as a necessary investment.

 

[coventry801]

This is a common point I hear, but I have never actually seen any evidence to back it up.
If we don't know how big the debt is, how do we know if there is actually a mountain of debt to begin with? Do you have any (reputable and conclusive) sources for your rather bold claims? The most common number I saw tossed around was 770B, but most articles often followed this point with admitting that the older lines began paying for themselves. I read that 5 out of 15 pay for themselves pre-covid.

Continued expansion at this rapid a rate of course would rack up a bill, but the system itself (if they stopped expanding) being a black hole of debt is another claim entirely.

Perhaps China sees this as an investment that pays back in alternate ways. There IS evidence to suggest that China's unbelievable growth in the past 20 years can be attributed in part to their HSR system.
The US interstates also sucked (and continue to do so) a lot of money, but we see it as a necessary investment.

"5 out of 15 pay for themselves pre-covid" is definitely not happening. Other than Jinghu line (Beijing South - Shanghai Hongqiao). You can get a ballpark number from Chinese propaganda , but bear in mind those numbers reported in propaganda are also most likely adjusted to make the government look good. Like how they report death tolls in Wuhan.

 

[Tlcooper93]

"5 out of 15 pay for themselves pre-covid" is definitely not happening. Other than Jinghu line (Beijing South - Shanghai Hongqiao). You can get a ballpark number from Chinese propaganda , but bear in mind those numbers reported in propaganda are also most likely adjusted to make the government look good. Like how they report death tolls in Wuhan.

Any sources for your other claims?
While it may indeed be true, I always find it a little lazy to blame communism for difficulty to find credible numbers.
Have you yourself been to China? Seems like you have a pretty specific view of the country that informs your opinion about its trains.

 

[coventry801]

Any sources for your other claims?
While it may indeed be true, I always find it a little lazy to blame communism for difficulty to find credible numbers.
Have you yourself been to China? Seems like you have a pretty specific view of the country that informs your opinion about its trains.

I though I put a link is in the last post. Google translate is your friend. Born from China. Grow in China. I know what I’m talking about.

Bottom line is always be skeptical about anything you read about China because most of time people inside China also don’t get truth because of the great firewall.

 

[Tlcooper93]

I though I put a link is in the last post. Google translate is your friend. Born from China. Grow in China. I know what I’m talking about.

Bottom line is always be skeptical about anything you read about China because most of time people inside China also don’t get truth because of the great firewall.

Fair enough.
I would still argue in favor of their bullet train system, but I won't pretend to know more about the details than you. Its not a secret to be skeptical about China, so that really isn't a revelation to any of us.

Google translate is not a friend. It has a word limit that would make for a timely process (and if its anything like Spanish, will provide a crappy translation at best). Perhaps you can translate/summarize or find a different article.

 

[cirdan]

I have never been to China myself so cannot say how cities are structures. But i would assume there isn't urban sprawl to the same extent there is in the USA. And maybe a new HSR line might affect a village here and a lonely house there, but you're not trampling on people's houses back to back all the way. The proportion of land that is agricultural or not used at all will probably be considerably higher.

 

[neroden]

I will also say that the legal system was more protective of Chinese citizens rights twenty years ago than today. I recall seeing a program on CCTV Chinese state television back in about 2005 about a band of lawyers defending villagers' rights when the government wanted to tear down their village to put up some kind of public works project. Even at the time, I found it amazing that the tenor of the program was favorable to the villagers and the lawyers working to defend their community. This absolutely wouldn't happen today, unfortunately. Xi has stifled any hint of dissent, tragically.

Yeah, Xi is a wannabe dictator with a fragile ego. I don't think that is going to work out well for him. China's system has been legalistic for over a thousand years and they have ancient fables about tyrannical emperors who lose the 'mandate of heaven' being overthrown. My study of history says that in practice, popularity matters more to the survival of a dictator than it does to a democratically elected official, and Xi's ignoring public opinion and simply trying to stifle dissent. (Contrast Putin, who is obsessed with opinion polls and always trying to keep his approval rating up.) The next few years in China should be far more interesting than anyone wants, thanks to Xi's incompetence and fragility.

 

[MARC Rider]

I have never been to China myself so cannot say how cities are structures. But i would assume there isn't urban sprawl to the same extent there is in the USA. And maybe a new HSR line might affect a village here and a lonely house there, but you're not trampling on people's houses back to back all the way. The proportion of land that is agricultural or not used at all will probably be considerably higher.

My short visit to Beijing suggested that the place had the density of Manhattan with the sprawl of Chicago. All of the residential development I saw was high rise apartments.




The traffic on the freeways and major roads is terrible; on the back streets, it's just like any large city and tolerable. It was supposed to be a 10 minute ride from out hotel to where the conference was being held. It took us at least a half hour to get there and over an hour to get back at the end of the day. The next day, the van driver took the back streets, and we got back in 20 minutes. As one can imagine, the subways are very well patronized:



What this suggests for high speed rail building is that while there might be more open land in between the cities, getting the line into the city might be more of a challenge.

 

[flitcraft]

I don't think you'll find a lot of 'open land' in China; at least in the eastern half of China where most of the high speed lines have been and are being constructed. There are over 100 cities with more than a million people in them--the corridors linking those many of those cities have become, practically speaking, megalopolises where one urban zone blends into the next.

 

[VentureForth]

If there is hidden debt in China, it's hidden by their gianormous trade surplus with all Americans who shop at Wal Mart.

 

[cirdan]

I don't think you'll find a lot of 'open land' in China; at least in the eastern half of China where most of the high speed lines have been and are being constructed. There are over 100 cities with more than a million people in them--the corridors linking those many of those cities have become, practically speaking, megalopolises where one urban zone blends into the next.

I agree, I guess.

But looking at the HSR map of China, HSR is venturing further and further west. Probably also with the intention of opening up cities in the interior for economic development and so taking pressure off the eastern cities.

 

[toddinde]

When I was in Beijing I loved to wander the backstreets (houtongs) and just observe. One thing I noted early on was a red circular stenciled "graffiti" with a couple characters that had been sprayed on several surfaces of some of the houtongs. I asked about it and it was the Party notice that that houtong had been condemned and would be razed within 90 days. There is a process similar to eminent domain but since few people actually owned the land they had a freehold type of contract on (usually limited to 70 years), they usually lose when the Party wanted their land. Very few people actually own land inside a city, the State owns it and leases it back to them for a stipulated time. When the Party bought the land they only paid for the pro-rated amount of the value, so if the family had been there for 50 years they got 20/70th of the purported value. But the process was pretty complicated because Chinese Land Law is really involved.
Upside is that 'backwards' sections of a city could be torn down after several years of planning and a couple months of notice of eviction to the people that live there. The people that were being evicted had usually known for a year or more that the eviction process was probably coming, but some claimed it was a surprise. Take that for what it is worth. The fact that some of the people would talk to me about something that sensitive was interesting in and of itself.
Downside of course is that the people that have lived there for a couple generations have to move on with short notice.
Conversely when I showed a pamphlet given away (at Tiananmen Square) by a distraught father that lost his son in PLA basic training the staff at the hotel ran away and wouldn't come out of hiding until I had been gone for some time. So there are things in China that they can complain about and things that they are not supposed to even see, let alone speak of. The father was grabbed by a squad of police that popped out of a hidden door and pulled him in with them in less than a minute. I got one of the pamphlets that were blown downwind when they nabbed the old gent.
Simplifying eminent domain here would simplify improving rail lines, but I am not sure that we would like the collateral damage.
China has some large advantages when it comes to building train lines.

Yes, we do forget that our railroads were built by the government seizing native lands. Railroads have extensive eminent domain rights to this day.

 

[toddinde]

The right of way situation in the US isn’t dire. We have freeway medians and underutilized rail rights of way. We could easily access city centers using existing transportation infrastructure, either rail or highway and do the same in rural areas. What we lack is a funding mechanism and political will and interest. We also have a total inability to do any future planning and a total aversion to intermodalism. We also pay more to build infrastructure in this country than anywhere else, and it has nothing to do with labor or environmental laws as other countries have more union protections and more stringent environmental laws than we do. Infrastructure in general, and railroads in particular are an epic fail in the US except when it comes to putting money in shareholder pockets which has become the sole measure of success. Until we figure out how to plan and how to build again in this country, we’ll keep falling further and further behind our peer competitor nations.