Be Cautious on Beijing-Shanghai High-speed Rail

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Thursday, September 11, 2003

Be Cautious on Beijing-Shanghai High-speed Rail

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Last Saturday the Nanjing-based Yangtze Evening News quoted unnamed "competent authorities" as saying construction of the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed transport line will start next year and be completed before the 2008 Summer Olympics.

On Tuesday, however, Shanghai's Oriental Morning Post reported that talks on the feasibility of such a line ran into a "stalemate" after five days of heated debate in Beijing.

According to the report, experts from the ministries of railways and science and technology, as well as academic institutions, agreed on the necessity part but did not even touch upon "technological analysis," the third topic originally slated for the meeting.

The short interval between the conflicting reports casts a weird shadow over the whole issue.

It's odd to talk about construction before we are not even sure exactly what line we want and what technologies to use.

After all, neither experts nor decision-makers have come up with a final concept about whether we should opt for a conventional wheel-and-track high-speed train, magnetic levitation train, or tilting train. There's been no consensus on whether we should use technologies from France, Germany, Japan, a combination of all three, or a combination of all three plus home grown techniques.

We're talking about a project worth at least 200 billion yuan (US$24 billion), but the ultimate cost of a 1,400-kilometre magnetic levitation line between Beijing and Shanghai could more than double that figure, according to current estimates.

The undertaking is popularly referred to as "the most gigantic one after the Three Gorges project"- and it truly is. There have been many feasibility studies since the mid-1990s, but they're obviously insufficient for such an expensive and complex project.

It is relatively easy to say how badly we need a high-speed link between our country's two most populous cities, but a decision that involves billions has to be made in an extremely cautious manner.

It will certainly be a plus if a high-speed rail service goes into operation before Beijing hosts the 2008 Summer Olympics, but at the very least it's not a precondition for staging Olympic events. Since the Games do not require such an extra tribute, there is no reason to be rash. My suggestion is for everyone involved to stay cool and forget about the Olympics.

The new central leadership has vowed to introduce democratic and scientific decision-making, and it has indeed taken on a new look in this regard.

Their handling of this project will be a telling test of loyalty to that pledge. (China Daily News)

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