An article in yesterday's New York Times about China's high-speed rail construction also gave some background information on why China is so insistent on building it:
"China’s lavish new rail system is a response to a failure of central planning six years ago.
After China joined the World Trade Organization in November 2001, exports and manufacturing soared. Electricity generation failed to keep up because the railway ministry had not built enough rail lines or purchased enough locomotives to haul the coal needed to run new power plants.
By 2004, the government was turning off the power to some factories up to three days a week to prevent blackouts in residential areas.
Officials drafted a plan to move much of the nation’s passenger traffic onto high-speed routes by 2020, freeing existing tracks for more freight. Then the global financial crisis hit in late 2008. Faced with mass layoffs at export factories, China ordered that the new rail system be completed by 2012 instead of 2020, throwing more than $100 billion in stimulus at the projects."
One other passage that stood out:
"In a little more than three hours, [the Guangzhou-to-Wuhan line] travels 664 miles, comparable to the distance from Boston to southern Virginia. That is less time than Amtrak’s fastest train, the Acela, takes to go from Boston just to New York."
One can only hope...
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