Liu exploited the communist leadership’s fascination with bigness and national prestige. Among the benefits he promised was a chance to squeeze foreign companies for bullet-train technology so that China could build and export its own. What happened next suggests that he — and others — also saw the potential for graft in such a vast undertaking.
In 2004, the State Council signed off on Liu’s plan to build the world’s largest high-speed-rail network by 2020. The first leg, a 72-mile stretch between Beijing and Tianjin, would open in time for the 2008 Olympics.
Word went forth that state-owned banks and local governments were to give Liu all the money, land and labor he required. When Chinese journalists found that Liu’s ministry was using cheap, low-quality concrete, creating a safety hazard, the Communist Party’s propaganda department quashed the reports, according to a January piece in the South China Morning Post.
Students and other humble citizens greeted the first fast trains with complaints about high ticket prices. They crowded aboard buses instead. According to a recent report in China Daily, the government was forced to deploy 70,000 extra buses during the Chinese New Year celebrations in February.
This month, I rode the bullet train from Beijing to Tianjin in half an hour — then returned by bus, which took two hours. Next to me on the decrepit, but packed, vehicle was a 17-year-old girl migrating to Beijing to search for work. She had never heard of the high-speed train, but when informed it cost $9, as opposed to $5.40 for the bus, expressed no regret at missing it. The bus driver assured me the girl was typical of his working-class clientele; to them, even a little money is more valuable than a lot of time. Small wonder that the Beijing-Tianjin line, built at a cost of $46 million per mile, is losing more than $100 million per year.
Meanwhile, in the United States, Obama’s high-speed rail plan, originally set at $53 billion over six years, has gotten a thorough democratic vetting. Three freshly elected Republican governors spurned federal dollars for high-speed rail, fearing a long-term burden on their budgets; homeowners in liberal Northern California are fighting construction through their neighborhoods; and the president agreed with Congress to trim current-year spending as part of a budget deal.
On the whole, I’d say China should envy us.
Charles Lane is a member of the editorial page staff. Yale Law School supported his travel to China to participate in a conference on media law issues co-sponsored by Yale Law School’s China Center and two Chinese Schools of Journalism.
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