China's high-speed-rail programme a case of too far, too fast

My wife was a "nervous Nellie" as we rode the Harmony CRH2-series high-speed train from Shanghai to Beijing last month. China's former minister of railways had just been convicted of big-time corruption in the construction of the rail network. As the train sped up to 310 kilometres an hour, she recalled the news images of China's first high-speed train disaster two years ago in Wenzhou, with its more than 230 casualties.

But the Harmony CRH2 is a modified version of Japan's vaunted Shinkansen "bullet train", which has had no fatal accidents in 50 years of operation, I reassured her. The technology was transferred from Kawasaki Heavy Industries, one of the makers of the bullet train, as well as Germany's Siemens and other hi-tech heavyweights. Running on the most advanced technology, how unsafe can high-speed rail travel in China be?

The answer, as it turns out, is less than reassuring. The reasons range from the rapid construction of the railways to the integration of technologies from multiple sources, from the quality of the materials to the maintenance of the vast national network. These system-wide issues are the result of China's aggressive effort to roll out the world's largest high-speed rail network at high speed. Indeed, this must be the first time in the history of technology deployment that a country has acquired, developed, manufactured and operated a new technology on a continental scale within a few years.

China announced its plan to build an express rail network in 2004; three years later, commercial high-speed trains began running on the first line, between Shenyang and Qinhuangdao in the northeast. Construction of the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed line commenced in April 2008 and commercial service less than three years later.

The Beijing-Guangzhou line, the world's longest at 2,298 kilometres, was in service by 2012. From 2004 to the end of last year, China built 9,800 kilometres of high-speed routes, more than the rest of the world combined.

By comparison, Japan pioneered the development of high-speed trains in the mid-1950s but its first bullet train went into service only in 1964 and nationwide service was phased in over a decade. The network has transported 10 billion passengers safely over half a century.

In the past 50 years there have been just three serious deadly crashes among the 20 countries that have high-speed-rail networks.