This video was made possible by Squarespace. Build your beautiful website for 10% off at
squarespace.com/Wendover. Imagine a train that took you from Washington,
DC to Dallas, Texas in nine hours… or Paris, France to Athens, Greece in nine hours…
or Adelaide, South Australia to Perth, Western Australia in nine hours. These train trips actually take 44 hours,
44 hours, and 41 hours respectively so the idea of making any of these trips by train
in nine hours seems almost absurd. In China, though, that’s reality. In September, 2018 the country opened up a
brand new high speed rail route with d irect trains from Hong Kong to Beijing. This is about the same distance as DC to Dallas,
Paris to Athens, or Adelaide to Perth and yet these trains make the trip in only 8 hours
and 56 minutes. What makes this even more impressive is that
ten years ago, in 2008, at the time of the Beijing Olympics, China’s high-speed rail
network consisted of this. We’ll have to zoom in because the extent
of the network was one 19 mile-long Maglev train from Shanghai Airport to the outskirts
of Shanghai and a traditional high-speed rail line from Beijing to the coastal city of Tianjin. Today, ten years later, that network has expanded
into this. China has eight times as much high speed track
as France, ten times as much as Japan, twenty times as much as the UK, and five-hundred
times as much as the US. In fact, China has as much high-speed rail
track as the rest of the world combined. It is staggering the amount of progress they
have made in such a short amount of time. Traditionally high speed rail exists in small
countries with rich populations by the likes of Germany, France, and Japan. China is neither of these things. The country is enormous, about the same size
as the US, and is also not rich. While no longer poor, China is definitively
a middle income country. It’s about as rich as Mexico, Thailand,
or Brazil. In fact, despite being the country with the
most high speed rail in the world, China is also the poorest country in the world to have
any high speed rail. Despite the country’s vast size, China’s
huge population makes it very dense especially in the east half. This means that China does have large cities
close enough together where it makes sense to take the train rather than the plane. Trips like Guangzhou to Changsha, a distance
of 350 miles, take an hour by plane or 2 hours and 20 minutes by train. When factoring in the time it takes to check
in, go through security, and board it absolutely makes sense to go by train when traveling
between these two cities even without considering that the high-speed train is cheaper than
flying. High speed rail even makes sense in China
on longer routes where it wouldn’t in other countries. Beijing and Shanghai, for example, are about
650 miles apart. Normally that would be too far for high speed
rail to make sense. Paris and Barcelona, for example, are 500
miles apart—closer than Beijing and Shanghai—but only two high speed trains a day run between
the two cities compared to about 20 flights. Between Beijing and Shanghai, on the other
hand, about 50 flights run per day run compared to 41 trains. Considering the trains carry far more people
each, up to 1,200, trains are therefore the dominant means of transport between these
two cities. There are a few differences between these
two routes. For one, while Beijing-Shanghai by train takes
4 hours and 28 minutes, Paris-Barcelona, despite being a shorter distance, takes a longer 6
hours and 25 minutes. The other factor, though, is about the competition. Europe has an efficient air transport network
dominated by budget airlines that are often far cheaper than trains. You can find tickets for flights between Paris
and Barcelona for as little as $12 while the cheapest Beijing-Shanghai flights go for $74. Air travel within China is also far from efficient. China Southern, China Eastern, and Air China,
the three largest Chinese airlines, arrive on time an average of 67%, 66%, and 63% of
the time respectively. A big reason for this is that there’s just
not enough room in the skies. A majority of China’s airspace is military
controlled meaning that there are just these narrow flight corridors that account for 30%
of airspace where civilian planes can fly. With tons of planes and not much room to fly
planes are frequently delayed by air traffic control to wait for the airspace to clear
up which leads to the abysmal on-time ratings of the country’s airlines. While the Beijing-Shanghai flight takes only
two hours the potential of delays, along with all the other factors that make air travel
slower, help make the train the popular means of transport on this longer route. Other train routes in China, though, make
less sense. For example, in 2014, the new high speed train
line opened between Lanzhou and Urumqi. These two cities are relatively small by China
standards. They both have a population of 3.5 million
and between them are only small towns. They’re also not close—about 1,000 miles
separate them. This project could therefore be compared to
building a high speed train from Denver to Seattle—they’re modestly sized cities
a long way’s apart with nothing big in between. Some people would use it but it wouldn’t
make any financial sense. In China, Lanzhou and Urumqi are not small
cities but there’s really nothing big in between and, at that distance, there’s no
sense not flying. The Lanzhou-Urumqi high speed train takes
11 hours compared to the 2.5 hour flight and the construction cost of that line was $20
billion meaning that, if every seat on every train was filled tickets would still have
to cost $400 each way just to make back the construction cost in 30 years. In reality tickets cost about $80 and trains
are far from full meaning that this rail line is just insanely far from profitable. The ticket revenues from these trains reportedly
don’t even cover the cost of electricity for the line let alone construction and other
operating costs. So why would the Chinese government sink so
much money into something that has no prospects of really ever making money? Well, politics. Urumqi is the capital of the Xinjiang province. While 92% of China’s population is Han Chinese,
the Xinjiang province is primarily Uyghur—one of the minority ethnic groups of China—and
there has been an ongoing fairly strong separatist movement by the Uyghurs from China that has
often turned violent. The central government in Beijing, however,
wants the Xinjiang province to be just as integrated as the rest of the country and
has tried a variety of methods to force this including moving Han Chinese into the region
and the imprisonment of Uyghurs in so-called “reeducation camps.” The high-speed train is just the most recent
tactic to bring Xinjiang closer to Beijing and this is no secret. The central government is fully upfront in
saying that the line was built to promote, as they call it, “ethnic unity.” This isn’t even the first time they’ve
used this tactic of railroad politics. Tibet, a region even better known than Xinjiang
for its independence movement, was the last region in China not to have a railway due
to its small population and intense terrain. The central government still wanted to build
one, though, to bring it closer to the rest of the country and so they did. Trains now run directly from Beijing to Lhasa,
Tibet in 47 hours on the highest elevation rail line in the world. These trains reach an elevation of 16,640
feet—so high that passengers have to use a direct oxygen supply. 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. 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
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They basically industrialized and mechanized building railways like many of their infrastructure project.
Edit: added mechanized. Because folks don't realize how mechanized they've become and assume it's cheap labor.
China treats infrastructure like we treat the pentagon.
No environmental impact reviews always helps.
Authoritarian governments are generally very good at infrastructure.
And when you don't have to concern yourself with EIR, even easier.
China would have no problem finishing the 710 freeway.
First step in learning is to accept that we dont know. Similarly in order to improve any system one must accept that other countries and nations can do something better then us.
Trying to find negativity (authoritarian regime, no EIR, etc) in China's fantastic infrastructure is only making us Americans look ignorant. If it was really that easy then half of the world would have better roads and railways then the USA.
I think we must set our priorities first, then plan and execute like we did in the 50s, 60s while building interstate. In the mean time learn from other nations like Europeans and asians. This mind set that we are number 1 and no other nation / government knows the hell they are doing is just wrong.
I live in Michigan and I can tell you that its has one of the worse infrastructure (roads, railways, bus stations, city transit) in north America. You can only compare Michigan / Detroit metro with the 3rd world and not with China or Europe.
Plus, they have spent nearly zero on research & design or even trial & error. When you steal the intellectual property of other nations and companies, the practical costs are much lower. . .
Wendover Productions is a great channel. Thanks for sharing!
Basically: Priorities, cheap labor, highly favorable environmental and land compensation laws (to the government)
Was kind of funny listening to the western narrator short circuit at the idea that a society could actually do something that didn't create a ton of private wealth for someone.
Regardless of what one thinks about their government's level of authoritarianism (Americans take a look in the mirror before you judge) their economic model is clearly superior in terms of how it serves the average citizen.