China’s High Speed Railway Blues

Chinese designed CRH380A train leaving Shanghai's Hongqiao Station. Credit: Wikipedia

What started as a seemingly freak accident is now just getting embarrassing. It seems the new Beijing-Shanghai high speed rail line, touted as a pillar of Chinese technological development and co-opted as a victory for the CCP — the rail line officially opened on the Party’s 90th birthday — may have serious problems.

The trains’ speed was already cut once before they were unveiled, from 350 kph to 300, ostensibly out of concerns about safety. After that, though, the Beijing-Shanghai line’s nearly two-month trial period seemed to be smooth sailing. Then it opened to the public on July 1st and things went downhill.

Word spread on Weibo that one of the trains had stopped. The power cut out, and passengers were stuck in stiflingly hot train cars with no AC for two hours. The reason? Weather, said railway officials. It was an unfortunate scandal that put a black mark on the train line’s debut, but few would have expected that less than a week later, the trains would have run into serious problems five more times.

That link is a news report that’s focused mostly on today’s stoppages, the fifth and sixth issues the train has had in the past five days. The recent accidents also included a new problem. While most of the issues so far have been related to power failures on the tracks, one of yesterday’s issues was a problem with the train itself. Ultimately, travelers ended up having to switch to a different train.

The netizenry, as cynical and mocking as ever, have already coined their own slang expression according to the China Media Project (which has covered this issue extensively and excellently): Four Days, Three Stops. However, since the expression was coined yesterday, news of three more problems has broken. As of this writing, we’re up to Five Days, Six Stops, but at this rate, who knows where we’ll be tomorrow.

Aside from the embarrassment factor, these accidents have got a lot of people asking whether or not the trains are fundamentally safe. Thus far, there have been no serious casualties as a result of any of the accidents, although plenty of passengers are quite worked up about them. But critics have long been skeptical of speed with which China’s high speed rail lines were built, and that skepticism wasn’t helped by the fact that the railway minister in charge of the high speed line was ousted for corruption earlier this year.

I have to imagine that sooner or later, they’ll get these issues under control, but what might have seemed ridiculous a week ago is now starting to seem like a valid question: by the time they do, will anyone still want to ride it?

Even before the problems, many passengers were put off by the ticket prices, which range from 410 RMB to 1750 RMB, according to eChinacities. And airlines, sensing blood in the water, perhaps, have lowered their ticket prices for Beijing-Shanghai flights. When booked a couple weeks in advance, flights can be found for as low as 410 RMB (before taxes and fees). The train may have originally had some “cool” factor, but whatever there was is certainly gone now. Railway officials may face a struggle selling tickets if problems continue (then again, they may not, as there are many, many people who need to make the Beijing-Shanghai trip and may be willing to take the risk).

Anyway, between the power problems and now the issues with the train itself, it’s been a pretty terrible start for the Beijing-Shangai rail, and things seem to be getting worse by the day. Until things have settled down a bit, we recommend you keep an eye on this story and, for the moment, stay off the Beijing-Shanghai high speed rail.