By Bree Feng, August 25, 2014

A high-speed train being inspected at a railway maintenance station in Xian, Shaanxi Province.Credit
High-speed rail has
brought many benefits to China, and now one more can be added to that
list: a handy point to lord over the United States.
Last week, People’s
Daily, the newspaper of the ruling Communist Party, ran a lengthy
analysis of high-speed rail development under the headline, “America’s
High-Speed Rail Dream Has Become a Global Joke.”
Seeing the
“revolutionary impact” high-speed rail has had on the economies and on
people’s daily lives in China and Europe, it said, “Americans’
high-speed rail dream has become increasingly intense.” But, it adds,
“though America leads in freight rail, its passenger rail conditions are
terrible.” The article cites, by way of example, a train ride from
Washington to Boston that was scheduled to take between six and seven
hours but took 13 hours because of heavy rain.
The People’s Daily article was also distributed by the prominent Chinese news portals Xinhua and Huanqiu.
The Obama
administration has set ambitious goals for rail in the United States.
“There’s no reason Europe or China should have the fastest trains,”
President Obama said
during his State of the Union address in 2010. The following year he
pledged to provide high-speed rail access to “80 percent of Americans”
within 25 years. But despite having earmarked nearly $11 billion for the
American rail system since then, little progress has been made toward meeting that goal.
The People’s Daily
article also lists the various obstacles that high-speed rail faces in
the United States, including political opposition and environmental
concerns.
From the perspective
of Chinese leaders, who brook no opposition to major infrastructure
projects, the Obama administration’s efforts to upgrade tracks in the
United States must indeed appear lackluster.
High-speed rail —
usually referring to trains that run at more than 155 miles, or 250
kilometers, per hour — has become one of the Chinese government’s most
successful large-scale infrastructure initiatives. Over the past six
years, under former President Hu Jintao and the current president, Xi
Jinping, the government has pumped hundreds of billions of renminbi into
ensuring that China’s high-speed rail system matches any in the
developed world. The system now transports nearly twice as many
passengers each month as China’s airlines.
As the World Bank reported
in July, construction costs per meter of rail are significantly lower
in China than in Europe and the United States as a result of high
volume, the low cost of land acquisition and a cheaper labor force,
among other factors.
Those advantages might
make a fair comparison with the United States difficult. Still, the
People’s Daily article said that one American lawyer on a business trip
in China was so dazzled by the country’s high-speed rail system that he
became a “China fan” and began studying Chinese after his return to the
United States.
Such global influence is exactly what Chinese leaders are after, targeting high-speed rail as a pillar of Chinese soft power abroad in addition to fueling regional economic growth.
Much as Vice President
Joseph R. Biden Jr. has been advocating rail development in the United
States, China’s second-ranking official, Premier Li Keqiang, has made
Chinese high-speed rail technology central to diplomatic efforts. Over
the past year, Mr. Li, dubbed “China’s super salesman”
by the state new media, has successfully promoted railway cooperation
between his country and Thailand; led 16 Central and Eastern European
leaders to a Chinese rail exhibition featuring a 21-meter, 0r 70-foot,
model train; and told African leaders that China is ready to help build a network of high-speed rail on their continent.
Still, the rapid
development of high-speed rail in China, often with lax oversight, has
not been without problems, including corruption, cost overruns and
deadly accidents. The former railway minister, Liu Zhijun, who made
high-speed rail his pet project, was dismissed in 2011 for corruption and in 2013 was given a suspended death sentence.
After Mr. Liu’s downfall, the Ministry of Railways was dismantled and its regulatory and business components separated.
In a visit last Friday to the headquarters of its successor, the China Railway Corporation, Mr. Li called
for more private financing of the rail system. The corporation’s
investment target for the coming year is 800 billion renminbi, or $130
billion, and it aims to put more than 4,100 miles of new lines into
operation.