In April 2010, Al Jazeera English reported on China’s high-speed rail growth, which will cost an estimated 300 billion dollars to build.
This latest generation of trains will crisscross the country at speeds up to 400 kilometers or 248 miles an hour.
China expects this infrastructure project to sustain economic growth.
Originally, plans for high-speed rail were in the future. However, faced with about 15 million job losses due to the 2008 global economic crises caused by US banks and Wall Street greed, China put six-million people back to work in 2009 by speeding up this project.
High-speed rail is a large component of China’s stimulus package.
Today, China has the world’s busiest rail network.
However, according to the World Bank if we measure kilometers of rail line per one million people, China’s rail network is not the size it should be to sustain growth.
With room to grow, China’s transport ministry set a goal to add 16,000 kilometers (almost ten thousand miles) of track to be built by 2012.
However, for most of China’s population, the cost of high-speed rail may be too high and some rural villages will have to be relocated to make room, which is a result of change.
Although some economists have concerns about the level and pace of infrastructure development in China, it is obvious that China is planning far into the future and not waiting for the future to arrive first.
In fact, China plans to have the largest high-speed rail network in the world within five years.
As economic conditions improve in rural China, more people may be able to buy tickets to ride fast trains. However, buying a ticket to fly may still be out of reach for most rural people.
China is also improving air travel. Short News from Flanders China Chamber of Commerce says, “In the next ten years China will add 90 new airports tripling the size of China’s small-sized jet passenger fleet from 500 to almost 1,600 by 2030.
Discover more at Speed on Rails and the Three Gorges Dam Makes News
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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.
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