Chinese Rail & Infrastructure News

No fly zone

Will Beijing to Shanghai bullet train be world’s busiest railway?
Jun 30, 2011 (WiC 113)

It took a day and a half to get to Beijing from Shanghai by train when Mao first took power in 1949. A new high-speed rail line opening today can do the trip in under five hours. It’s a highly symbolic moment for the country’s leaders. After ...

The new Silk Road

Chongqing mayor opens train route to Europe
Jun 24, 2011 (WiC 112)

It carried spices and peerless porcelain, as well as medicinal rhubarb and (most famously of all) silk. The Silk Road between China and the West dates back as far as 150 BC and evokes powerful images – not least of the intrepid Marco Polo ...

Flight risk

New Beijing to Shanghai train could hurt airlines
May 20, 2011 (WiC 107)

Let the Train Take the Strain was an advertising slogan favoured by former railway operator British Rail for its intercity services in the 1980s. Thirty years later, with China building plenty of new high-speed track, it is airlines who are said ...

A faster way to develop?

Fund manager travels on Chinese high-speed train and offers prognosis
Apr 28, 2011 (WiC 104)

Veteran investor James Cheng returns to our pages this week. The fund manager with Morgan Stanley Asset Management wrote an essay for WiC in issue 76, posing the question ‘Can China Innovate?’. In this follow-up piece he ...

Off the rails

Train boss ousted for corruption
Feb 18, 2011 (WiC 95)

On August 8, 1963 a postal train was held up at a railway bridge in Ledburn in England. The heist soon gained fame as The Great Train Robbery. Some of the gang were caught, others fled the country. Accounting for inflation, they stole the ...

Gone to plan

‘State capitalism’ helped China through the crisis and has even won foreign fans
Dec 3, 2010 (WiC 88)

State capitalism goes back a long way in China. In WiC30, we suggested that the kilns of Jingdezhen provided one early example. The Yuan Dynasty (1279-1368) established an official agency, the Fouliang Porcelain Bureau, to control pottery ...

On the fast track

Green light at home but will China’s high-speed trains face litigation overseas?
Dec 3, 2010 (WiC 88)

"One need not be obsessed with the merits of the Chinese to recognise that their empire is the best that the world has ever seen.” So said Voltaire in 1764. Only a few decades later the empire in question would receive a trade embassy from the ...

Not a Mecca for profitability

A Saudi railway project brings a $623 million loss for Chinese firm, CRCC
Nov 5, 2010 (WiC 84)

One of the Five Pillars of Islam is the Hajj, a pilgrimage to Mecca that every Muslim should complete at least once in their lifetime. The number of pilgrims making the journey is increasing every year (in 2009, there were more than 2.5 ...

Mind the gap

China’s top two train-makers in underground war
Oct 22, 2010 (WiC 82)

For conspiracy theorists there is a tendency to think of China’s large state-owned firms as chess pieces, guided by ingenious planners in Beijing intent on global domination. While there may be a grain of truth in this, the reality is often a ...

Not fare

A looming train crisis
Oct 22, 2010 (WiC 82)

WiC must be in a train-spotting mood this week. Here is another China railway statistic, this time about the ‘Harmony Express’ high-speed train that runs between Wuhan and Guangzhou. The bullet train covers a distance similar to travelling ...

Mobile devices
Get the Week in China apps App Store Google PlayDownload Apps
Home|Current Issue|About Us|Contact Us|Data Privacy Policy

©2009-2023 Week in China is published weekly by ChinTell Limited, a company based in Hong Kong. All rights reserved.