Even the train to Hong Kong serves the central government’s goal of further integrating Hong Kong, which is an autonomous special administrative region, into mainland China. While high-speed trains to Hong Kong certainly do make a lot more sense than trains to the Xinjiang province, many Hong Kongers have not greeted the new service kindly as they view it as an encroachment on the autonomy guaranteed to them by Hong Kong Basic Law. The most controversial part has not been the fact that there’s a train but rather that the station in Hong Kong includes an area that is effectively now part of Mainland China since people pass through border controls before boarding the train in Hong Kong. Just like any country, what having a high-speed, efficient rail network in China is doing is bringing the country together and making it stronger even if it’s bringing together people that want to stay apart. No matter their motives, it’s clear that China is building their high speed rail network more efficiently than any other country. To compare, this is the plan for California’s high speed rail line from San Francisco to the Los Angeles area casinoslots nz.
It’s currently in very early phases of construction and is expected to open by 2029. Of course that means that the time it will take for the California’s high speed rail network to go from this to this is the same as the time it took China’s high speed rail network to go from this to this but, the main thing to look at is cost. This Californian network is expected to cost $77 billion and is 520 miles long meaning that it will cost $148 million per mile to build. China, on the other hand, is building their network at a cost of only $30 million per mile. Of course labor costs are lower in China and their network crosses more rural areas where land acquisition costs are lower but, what’s more meaningful is that they’ve turned building high speed rail into almost an assembly line process where they can mass produce even the most expensive elements like viaducts and tunnels. In true Chinese fashion, with scale they’re making high-speed cheaper. The big difference between China and a lot of the western world, particularly countries like the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the UK, is that high speed rail is at the top of the government’s priorities. Unsurprisingly given their government structure, in many ways, China has placed social benefit, at least by the definition of the central government, ahead of profitability when developing their high speed rail network. High-speed rail lines just aren’t as profitable as other means of transport like planes but they are undoubtably better for countries so you have to consider the social benefit when looking at their overall profitability. For the San Francisco to LA high speed rail route, for example, one study found that the social benefit derived from lower carbon emissions, higher worker productivity, and reduced casualties from fewer people on the road would be equivalent to about $440 million per year. As it turns out, this is almost the exact amount that the state will have to subsidize the line for it to break even. The China Railway Corporation, a state owned enterprise, is actually slightly profitable, although it does have huge amounts of debts and is helped by government subsidies. The benefit to the Chinese people, though, is huge. The high-speed rail allows those who can’t afford to live in the most expensive cities like Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou to easily commute from cheaper suburbs by high-speed rail. Thanks to the high-speed rail, there are now 75 million people who can commute to Shanghai in under an hour. It is growing what are already some of the largest cities and, when it comes to cities, size is strength. These lines connecting the east’s largest cities are some of the most profitable rail lines in the world and they’re making living and working in China easier but the question is, when we look back decades from now, whether the high-speed trains to smaller cities will have made sense. Out of a desire to keep the lines going straight between the big cities, the stops for smaller cities are often out in the countryside dozens of miles away from the city core. The high speed station for Hengyang, for example, a smaller city of only a million, is about a 45 minute drive east of the city center. The hope is that new development will spring up around the stations but this network structure, even if it saves time on the train, wastes time before and after which degrades the benefit of high-speed rail. In all, China is really the first country to have experimented with long-distance, high speed rail through less-dense areas in its west. In the east, though, these trains are enlarging the country’s economic power. It’s just one of the many factors speeding up China’s catch-up with world’s richest countries. Even though China is building these trains for less and innovating on the construction of high-speed rail, the real reason why China is so good at building railways is because they have the one thing that almost every other country lacks—the political will for high-speed trains. Whenever I’m looking to to launch something new one of the first things I think about is how to present it online. I think about domain names, emails, websites, and where I always go to do all that is Squarespace. As you probably know by now, Squarespace is the all-in-one solution to building a web presence for whatever you do. Being in the internet age it’s incredibly important to present yourself well online and Squarespace’s beautiful designer templates, customizable website builder, and 24/7 award-winning customer support help you do that all for a reasonable monthly cost. It’s a much better solution that learning how to code a website or paying someone thousands to do it. It is also, of course, made easier by the fact that you can get 10% off by going to squarespace.com/Wendover and you’ll be supporting the show by using that link.
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