These high speed rail lines are NOT providing social mobility. These trains are quite expensive to ride, and they’re out of reach for a lot of Chinese citizens. Many poor people opt for the conventional slow trains, which tend to be cheaper. So your average HSR line will run mostly empty outside a select few lines between two very major cities, while your average conventional rail will be crowded with passengers.
Also, China’s infrastructure project aren’t not paying dividends like they’re supposed, especially their HSR. The idea is that if the government invest money into a logical rail system, that system will be pay for itself indirectly even if it operates on a loss. However, in China’s case the system isn’t built logically. China in the 2000s and 2010s wanted to maintain their high GDP growth at all costs, and the CCP thought this was the way to do it. Initially they were right as stimulus on infrastructure projects are generally a smart investment because they create jobs, gives the country the needed infrastructure, and boosts growth… but they just didn’t stop. They built all the logical feasible lines, then they built some less logical and feasible lines, and they kept building more and more until the new lines made no sense whatsoever. This type of building isn’t smart, it’s reckless, and they’re paying the price for it right now.
I don’t think you comprehend just how insanely large $900 billion is. That’s the equivalent of the entire annual GDP of the world’s 20th largest economy, Switzerland, in 2023. All this debt is just on a rail system that’s pretty damn new. To put things in perspective, let’s compare it to Germany’s system. For Germany’s ENTIRE rail system, which includes slow trains, high speed trains, and freight trains their rail system is only $20 billion in debt. If Germany were to have a rail system as long as China’s (150,000 km vs 40,625 for Germany), the debt it would have for its rail system would be about $74 billion. China has $900 billion in debt on its high speed rail alone. That is nuts, this is a rail system that will never pay itself back directly or indirectly. This amount of debt is so huge for a HSR system that it’s actually unsustainable.
These high speed rail lines are NOT providing social mobility. These trains are quite expensive to ride, and they’re out of reach for a lot of Chinese citizens. Many poor people opt for the conventional slow trains, which tend to be cheaper. So your average HSR line will run mostly empty outside a select few lines between two very major cities, while your average conventional rail will be crowded with passengers.
Also, China’s infrastructure project aren’t not paying dividends like they’re supposed, especially their HSR. The idea is that if the government invest money into a logical rail system, that system will be pay for itself indirectly even if it operates on a loss. However, in China’s case the system isn’t built logically. China in the 2000s and 2010s wanted to maintain their high GDP growth at all costs, and the CCP thought this was the way to do it. Initially they were right as stimulus on infrastructure projects are generally a smart investment because they create jobs, gives the country the needed infrastructure, and boosts growth… but they just didn’t stop. They built all the logical feasible lines, then they built some less logical and feasible lines, and they kept building more and more until the new lines made no sense whatsoever. This type of building isn’t smart, it’s reckless, and they’re paying the price for it right now.
I don’t think you comprehend just how insanely large $900 billion is. That’s the equivalent of the entire annual GDP of the world’s 20th largest economy, Switzerland, in 2023. All this debt is just on a rail system that’s pretty damn new. To put things in perspective, let’s compare it to Germany’s system. For Germany’s ENTIRE rail system, which includes slow trains, high speed trains, and freight trains their rail system is only $20 billion in debt. If Germany were to have a rail system as long as China’s (150,000 km vs 40,625 for Germany), the debt it would have for its rail system would be about $74 billion. China has $900 billion in debt on its high speed rail alone. That is nuts, this is a rail system that will never pay itself back directly or indirectly. This amount of debt is so huge for a HSR system that it’s actually unsustainable.