China’s High-speed Railways Fall into Debt Trap
Just over a decade ago, in 2009, China’s first long-distance high-speed rail (HSR) service covered the 968 kilometers between Wuhan and Guangzhou at an average speed of around 350 kilometres per hour. The feat was recognised as the Communist Party of China’s “debt-fuelled" response to the global financial crisis. It was a sort of a “Railway Keynesianism," where China re-engineered its railway infrastructure to drive the demand for concrete and steel and create millions of jobs.
In the decade that followed, China’s HSR network spanned over a track length of 38,000 kilometres, the highest in the world. Bagging a share of 26 per cent of the country’s total railway network, HSR today connects almost every major city in China, with travel time just a couple of hours more than air travel, but with the comfort that only trains can provide.
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