Chinas High Speed Rail Development

Over the past decade, China has built 25,000 km of dedicated highspeed railway—more than the rest of the world combined. What can we learn from this remarkable experience? China’s High-Speed Rail Development examines the Chinese experience to draw lessons for countries considering investing in high-speed rail. The report scrutinizes the planning and delivery mechanisms that enabled the rapid construction of the high-speed rail system. It highlights the role of long-term planning, consistent plan execution, and a joint venture structure that ensures active participation of provincial and local governments in project planning and financing. Traffic on China’s high-speed trains has grown to 1.7 billion passengers a year. The study examines the characteristics of the markets for which high-speed rail is competitive in China. It discusses the pricing and service design considerations that go into making high-speed rail services competitive with other modes and factors such as good urban connectivity that make the service attractive to customers. One of the most remarkable aspects of the Chinese experience is the rapid pace of high-quality construction. The report looks at the role of strong capacity development within and cooperation among China Railway Corporation, rail manufacturers, universities, research institutions, laboratories, and engineering centers that allowed for rapid technological advancement and localization of technology. It describes the project delivery structures and incentives for delivering quality and timely results. Finally, the report analyzes the financial and economic sustainability of the investment in high-speed rail. It finds that a developing country can price high-speed rail services affordably and still achieve financial viability, but this requires very high passenger density. Economic viability similarly depends on high passenger density.

This book reflects on experiences in other countries and makes recommendations for improving the capability and capacity of institutions and organizations, in order to achieve sustainable development of the Chinese high-speed railway (HSR) system.

This book presents cutting-edge theories, techniques, and methodologies in the multidisciplinary field of high-speed railways, sharing the revealing insights of elite scholars from China, the UK and Japan. It demonstrates the achievements that have been made regarding high-speed rail technologies in China from all aspects, while also providing a macro-level comparative study of related technologies in different countries. The book offers a valuable resource for researchers, engineers, industrial practitioners, graduate students, and professionals in the fields of Vehicles, Traction Power Supplies, Materials, and Infrastructure.

The story of the world's most audacious infrastructure project. Less than a decade ago, China did not have a single high-speed train in service. Today, it owns a network of 14,000 miles of high-speed rail, far more than the rest of the world combined. Now, China is pushing its tracks into Southeast Asia, reviving a century-old colonial fantasy of an imperial railroad stretching to Singapore; and kicking off a key piece of the One Belt One Road initiative, which has a price tag of $1 trillion and, reaches inside the borders of more than 60 countries. The Pan-Asia Railway portion of One Belt One Road could transform Southeast Asia, bringing shiny Chinese cities, entire economies, and waves of migrants where none existed before. But if it doesn't succeed, that would be a cautionary tale about whether a new superpower, with levels of global authority unimaginable just a decade ago, can pull entire regions into its orbit simply with tracks, sweat, and lots of money. Journalist Will Doig traveled to Laos, Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore tochronicle the dramatic transformations taking place -- and to find out whether ordinary people have a voice in this moment of economic, political, and cultural collision.

High-speed railway system is interdisciplinary subject that covers infrastructure, mobile equipment, traction power supply, communication signal, operation and maintenance, and transportation organization. The purpose of this book is to give readers a basic understanding of the technology behind of China's high-speed rail network.In this book, the author mainly focusses on the innovations of products and processes, especially product innovation, which involves the selection of technology route, technology system and technology source. Therefore, the innovation in HST here refers to the selection of technology route, technology system and technology source, as well as, the new products developed and manufactured according to the selection. With the in-depth study, the author would like to provide outlook for development in this area in the next stage.

As a vehicle to convey both the history of modern China and the complex forces still driving the nation’s economic success, rail has no equal. Railroads and the Transformation of China is the first comprehensive history, in any language, of railroad operation from the last decades of the Qing Empire to the present. China’s first fractured lines were built under semicolonial conditions by competing foreign investors. The national system that began taking shape in the 1910s suffered all the ills of the country at large: warlordism and Japanese invasion, Chinese partisan sabotage, the Great Leap Forward when lines suffered in the “battle for steel,” and the Cultural Revolution, during which Red Guards were granted free passage to “make revolution” across the country, nearly collapsing the system. Elisabeth Köll’s expansive study shows how railroads survived the rupture of the 1949 Communist revolution and became an enduring model of Chinese infrastructure expansion. The railroads persisted because they were exemplary bureaucratic institutions. Through detailed archival research and interviews, Köll builds case studies illuminating the strength of rail administration. Pragmatic management, combining central authority and local autonomy, sustained rail organizations amid shifting political and economic priorities. As Köll shows, rail provided a blueprint for the past forty years of ambitious, semipublic business development and remains an essential component of the PRC’s politically charged, technocratic economic model for China’s future.

Presenting an analytical approach to assessing the socioeconomic impact of high speed rail in China, and using a multilevel spatial analysis approach at both the national and the regional level, this book emphasizes capturing the spatial spillover effects of rail infrastructure development on China’s economic geography in terms of land use, housing market, tourism, regional disparity, modal competition, the economy and environment.

This book is the sixth volume in a series entitled “Contemporary Logistics in China,” authored by researchers at the Logistics Center, Nankai University. In the spirit of the five preceding volumes, published annually in previous years, this book carries on the ideal of providing a systematic exposition on the development of logistics in China to the English-speaking community. Specifically, this volume captures China’s logistics development at a crucial turning point. On the one hand, it echoes the new horizon advocated by the Government’s One-Belt-One-Road Initiative for global cooperation; on the other, it resonates with the new blueprint of implementing the main contents of the 13th Five-year Plan on logistics development. Subjects covered include the macro-factors pertaining to logistics development, region-specific plans, industry-wide transformation, globally oriented moves, and current hot topics. Expositions and analyses on these subjects are based on the latest available sources and statistical data. As with the previous volumes, the ultimate aim of this book is to present a timely portrait of the rapid growth of China’s logistics market and the status of its logistics industry’s evolution. In so doing, this book offers an in-depth analysis of the critical issues and dilemmas amid the ongoing, dynamic and multi-faceted development, and presents a valuable reference source for interested readers in the academic and professional fields.

This book systematically expounds the significance of the high-speed railway in China's regional economic and social development. It also contains a large number of case discussions, so that readers can fully understand the development of China's high-speed railway and its role in promoting China's economy. The purpose of this book is to determine whether high-speed railway has important political and strategic significance for China's development, the inherent relationship and mechanism of the high-speed railway together with economic and social development, and how to achieve the high-speed rail and economic and social coordination, as well as sustainable development.

This book provides the first unifying treatment of the range of economic reasons for the clustering of firms and households. Its goal is to explain further the trade-off between various forms of increasing returns and different types of mobility costs. Although referring to agglomeration as a generic term is convenient, it should be noted that the concept of economic agglomeration refers to distinct real world situations. The main focus of the treatment is on cities, but it also explores the formation of agglomerations, such as commercial districts within cities, industrial clusters at the regional level, and the existence of imbalance between regions. The book is rooted within the realm of modern economics and borrows concepts from geography and regional science, which makes it accessible to a broad audience formed by economists, geographers, regional planners, and other scientists. It may be used in coursework for graduate students and upper-level undergraduates.