Barun Roy
If China is spending $1.2 billion to build a 30-kilometre railway between
downtown Shanghai and Pudong International Airport across the Huangpu River,
eyebrows needn't be raised.
China is a nation in a hurry. Time is not something to be wasted;rather, it is
a commodity that can be, and should be, turned into valuable economic gain.
It's going to be no ordinary railway, as the price tag well suggests. When it
opens for business early next year, it will be the world's first magnetically
levitated, or Maglev, train in commercial operation. It won't run on wheels. It
will "fly".
It will sort of float above the guideway and cruise at a top speed of 430
kilometres per hour, which means that the distance between Pudong Airport and
downtown Shanghai can be covered in just eight minutes.
Is it essential that visitors, investors, and businesspersons do the commute in
eight minutes? Maybe not. But foreigners making the transit in eight minutes
are bound to be hugely impressed, and when foreigners are impressed, they
spread the word and want to come back.
That's goodwill, which China values because, in the end, it's the goodwill that
begets business.
Perhaps that's why the Chinese haven't yet given the go-ahead for their much-talked-about
Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway project, although it is listed under the
2001-2005 Tenth Five-Year Plan.
Having been exposed to Maglev, they aren't quite sure they want a wheel-and-track
service for this corridor. Yet, they don't want to make a commitment without
first ascertaining how the Shanghai-Pudong operation goes.
A lot of people are closely watching the Shanghai Maglev, in which Germany's
Siemens is an investor, because the fate of at least two other Maglev projects,
one in Germany and one in Japan, depends on its outcome. Once any of those
projects get under way, one can be pretty sure the Chinese would go for Maglev
on the Beijing-Shanghai run, too.
It's a very high-demand corridor and people using it would want as high a speed
as they can get. If one can make the 1,463-km run in four or five hours, the
whole complexion of doing business in China will change.
The Chinese are fully aware of the long-term benefits of such a transformation
and are not the kind to count their pennies when it comes to achieving their
goals.
Speed is king in today's China and 140 kmph is already the average on its
railways. Between Beijing and Guangzhou, Harbin, and Shanghai, 160 kmph is
quite normal. Since January last year, a high-speed passenger train, called
Blue Arrow, has been shuttling between Guangzhou and Shenzhen at 200 kmph.
Along with speeding, massive efforts are going into expanding the country's
70,000 km railway network. At least a thousand kilometres of new lines are
added every year so that no part of the country remains isolated.
There's now a train going into Hainan Island and work will soon begin on a
1,118 km railway from Golmud in Qinghai province to Lhasa in Tibet, crossing
the Gobi desert and areas where the soil is permanently frozen at altitudes of
over 4,000 metres.
With 1.8 billion tons of freight and over 1 billion passengers carried last
year, China has every reason to increase the stake on its railways. Last year,
it spent $ 6 billion to build new lines and double-track and electrify existing
ones. This year, an investment of $ 7 billion is slated.
Until now, the money for railway projects has come from central and provincial
coffers, but, as bills keep soaring, the government is keen to explore other
sources of funding.
In fact, for the first time in the history of Chinese railways, Beijing has
asked for bids from foreign investors to implement the Yantai-Dalian rail-ferry
project as a joint venture.
The $ 408.4 million project, to be completed by 2005, involves a 147 km
crossing of the Bohai Bay and will shorten the traveling distance between
northeast China and Shandong province by 400 km. To the Yangtze delta, the
distance will be 1,000 km shorter.
Foreign partners will finance, build, operate, and maintain the railway and
will be offered tax benefits and preferences in the use of land, water, power,
communications facilities, roads, and railways.
Initial reports are that the offer has evoked keen international interest, and
if it goes through well, Beijing will have found a useful new mechanism to fund
its future, and increasingly expensive, railway projects