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Chinese Rail & Infrastructure News

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Dalian plans world’s largest undersea project
Apr 12, 2013 (WiC 188)

No one could accuse the builders of the Channel Tunnel of acting in haste. The idea was first proposed in 1802 by French engineer Albert Mathieu, who envisaged horse-drawn carriages going through the tunnel, guided by gas lights. A British ...

End of the line

Railway ministry on verge of break up, as Li Keqiang reforms bureaucracies
Mar 8, 2013 (WiC 184)

Reforming a bureaucracy is never easy. Just ask Jim Hacker, the Minister of Administrative Affairs in the classic UK television show Yes, Minister. He regularly battled with his top civil servant Sir Humphrey Appleby in seeking – in Hacker’s ...

Rail’s speedy recovery

Construction of the national rail network picks up pace once more
Jan 25, 2013 (WiC 179)

Liu Zhijun, the former railways minister, will probably be remembered as the man who introduced high-speed rail to China. Unfortunately, his legacy was marred by a horrendous accident. Liu – who was in charge of the national railway system ...

Sany decides to swap Changsha for Beijing
Nov 30, 2012 (WiC 174)

Politicians the world over know that going ‘off-message’ can damage the chances of achieving high office. But Liang Wengen, one of the China’s richest people, seems to have forgotten that lesson earlier this month, when he started ...

Embracing politics

Sany’s boss to make political history
Nov 2, 2012 (WiC 170)

It’s not often that a sitting US president is sued. The New York Times says one of the more bizarre cases occurred in 1962 when President Kennedy faced civil action for his role in a traffic accident. The plaintiff was Hugh Lee Bailey, a ...

Fast forgotten?

An unhappy anniversary: the Wenzhou rail crash
Jul 27, 2012 (WiC 160)

When a high-speed train ran into the back of another near the city of Wenzhou on July 23 last year, killing 40 and injuring 172, China watchers marvelled that the local media was being allowed to cover the tragedy. The freedom was short-lived. ...

Taking its toll

Do contracts matter to Guangdong’s local government?
Jun 15, 2012 (WiC 154)

At the end of May investors in the Macquarie International Infrastructure Fund (MIIF) got a nasty shock when they were informed that revenues from a Chinese toll road in the fund’s portfolio were likely to fall by as much as 25%. That ...

Too much stimulation?

The stimulus package saved China, but its infrastructure binge may sour
May 18, 2012 (WiC 150)

When it comes to deciding whether something has a beneficial impact or a negative one, perhaps we could all take a leaf out of the book of former Mississippi representative, Noah ‘Soggy’ Sweat. Almost 60 years ago the politician was asked ...

Not fit for purpose

New train internet booking system gets flak
Jan 20, 2012 (WiC 135)

A project “fitting for the 21st century” is how plans for HS2, a new high-speed railway for the UK, were announced this month. But although HS2 trains promise to run rapwenidly enough, the programme to complete the line is going to proceed ...

Hitting the buffers

Senior bosses implicated in final crash report
Jan 6, 2012 (WiC 133)

On October 2, 1872 one of the world’s best-known travellers boarded a train at Charing Cross station at 8.45pm, and reached Paris the next morning at 7.20. Phileas Fogg had begun his attempt to go round the world in eighty days. Of course, ...

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