When I travelled to China for the first time I've spent one month there travelling across the entire country via their highspeed train network. It's amazing, all major places are so well connected and the trains are really cheap, offer 1st, 2nd, 3rd and business class acommodating all various budgets and comfort styles and they run really smoothly and are amazingly on time!
After departure it doesn't take more than a handful minutes before the train reaches its desired speed of just over 300km/h and it remains consistent at this speed for the entire journey unless it has to stop at a station.
I wish Europe was so well connected via such an efficient and affordable train system. I think then we could easily raise the tax on airplanes to ridiculous premiums and happily expect people to entirely ditch short distance flights.
China is doing amazing things and they get way too little credit for all the innovative things they do. Unfortunately we only get to read the negatives, but I went back to China again and I really love how people live there in increasingly better conditions and not only outpacing other countries economically, but also making huge efforts in creating a fair, enjoyable and sociable environment for everyone.
Say what you want, but you'll never understand until you've been there yourself and experienced China first hand yourself. It's nothing what the media makes us believe!
Having lived and worked in China for several years recently, and continuing to regularly visit, I agree with almost everything you said except for the "huge efforts in creating a fair [...] system for everyone". I saw no evidence of any such effort to create a fair system. For example, China's rule of law is effectively driven by power and connections, not on evidence and fairness, and the effect of this extends throughout society, though I can understand that a traveler would probably not encounter this much, if at all.
> I saw no evidence of any such effort to create a fair system.
As fast as China is developing, it takes more than a few years of a snapshot expat life in a tier1-2 city to appreciate the scale of uplifting. The evidence is everywhere if are familiar with Chinese development goals and rate progress in context of the Chinese system where inequity and corruption are both intentional and deliberate development strategies.
Inequity: Deng wanted to direct development of coast regions first to rapidly cultivate an economic model (all the SEZs). The lessons learned would be used to improve the interior. The goal is to become a "moderately prosperous society" by 2021 with per capita GDP of $10,000 (current forecast is $12,000), followed by complete urbanization and poverty alleviation by 2030, followed by "China Dream" of per capita GDP of $40,000 by 2050. Some of the coastal cities are currently at $20,000 or $40,000 by PPP.
The system is working as intended, the big current efforts is to redirect coastal manufacturing and wealth into interior development which has "unfairly" languished, but as someone who spend a decade travelling between tier1 and county level (i.e too backwater to even be on the tier system) in the 90s, there's been improvements in aggregate everywhere. It may feel uneven depending on time and place but the trend is undeniable.
Corruption: to preserve the political narrative of "socialist economy", corruption was a mechanism used to transfer state resources to meritocratically selected local party officials that was still beholden to the goal of development and growth to ensure future promotions. This is why corruption has bad in India, Russia, Indonesia, Ukraine, etc but good in China. China is the only country where increased corruption is correlated to increased growth. This is posited by Yukon Huang, former World Bank director for China, Russia, and Former Soviet Union Republics. Power and connections only go so far (and sometimes too far), but most low tier bureaucratic arise through performance. They're welcome to gaft a little on the side but they better build X new residential units, Y infrastructure to meet Z urbanization goals.
E: It's not perfect, especially rule of law, but these institutions usually take a long time to build. Somethings can be rushed (construction), somethings can't (integration), but it's China, despite perceived "patience" of Chinese grand strategy, they'll try to rush things anyway (love them 5,10,15 year plans), frequently it's unethical, sometimes it'll backfire, but moving this fast is an unending series of trolley problems with 1.4 billion lives. Overall, IMO they're doing well. Prioritizing elimination of poverty at the expense of some corruption and inequity is the correct short-term moral calculus for me. And it's not like they're not trying to address the latter (anticorruption, HK etc).
Every time I go to China (to visit relatives) I expect to be in this sort of dystopic society like how everyone describes it, yet here I find probably the most integrated system of people and technology. Credit cards don't exist, everyone pays via QR code and phone. Tickets are on your phone, a simple monorail travels fast, with security, and the stations are actually clean (unlike NYC). In a certain sense you could say it's the future that you see in some movies. Too bad everything is blocked and you can feel yourself being watched all the time. But I guess that comes with the added benefit of safety in some regards.
Even with the current train connections, it would be a great improvement to book a single ticket for multi-country journeys.
Right now, I need a ticket for Germany, France and Spain to get to Barcelona. If any of the trains runs late and I miss a train, I'd have to buy a new ticket for the connecting train.
So a single booking agency with guaranteed connecting trains would be great.
I thought you could buy tickets from Germany to e.g. Barcelona with Deutsche Bahn? The "only" problems are that one needs to visit a physical office of theirs as online booking is not possible and you may pay a lot more than buying individual cheap tickets with the operators.
There’s at least some single ticketing in Europe - we bought a ticket from the UK to the south of Germany this summer & it was a single ticket changing in Brussels and Frankfurt, with automatic carry over for missed connections caused by train delays.
it's impressive. Major improvement would be if all travelers in chinese trains would use headphones if they want to listen music or play games. Personally I love silence in Japanese trains - everybody is polite and silent.
It doesn't make much sense to hook up Europe the same way because the population density in most parts of the map is no where close to China.
Compare it with India and you will see the same number of stations/trains/bus routes all subsidized and dirt cheap (compared to Europe), but far below in any other standard (naturally because they are poorer).
First class in the best long-distance Indian trains is really quite comfortable. Beds are standard, whereas sleeper trains are disappearing in Europe, and you can use an app to order a meal for a certain time, which will be brought on board to you from a nearby restaurant at the appropriate station!
Having taken the trains a few times from Denmark, through to Germany and Austria, it is always anxious because of missing connections and being stranded/inconvenienced along the journey. It is not particularly cheap compared to flights.Got a problem? - first think which train company to call and ask help from - DSB(Denmark), DB(Germany) or OBB(Austrian) and cross fingers that they speak in English :-)
It is very complicated. If there was a single train service that worked all over Europe that is responsible for getting from city A to City B as fast as they could, it would be lovely, but I doubt if we will ever get there given the geo-political differences in Europe.
If you have a single ticket, or you have separate tickets but the train operators are members of Railteam or parties to AJC (DSB, DB and OBB all are), there's no reason to feel anxious.
Get the conductor on the delayed train to endorse your ticket proving the train ran late (or give you something saying so, if you have a digital ticket).
When the train arrives, if your next train is a "reservation only" service, you should go to the desk of the train operator, show them your ticket from the late-arriving train endorsed with the delay and your ticket for the outbound train that you've missed, and they'll give you a new ticket for the next train with availability.
If the next train isn't a "reservation only" service I usually just get on and sort it out with the conductor. I think technically you're not supposed to do this, but it saves time so can allow you to take an earlier train, and I've never had a problem doing it. YMMV!
I've done this probably 8 times, and never encountered someone who couldn't speak English well enough to understand the situation. In fact, very little communication is necessary since you're holding an endorsed ticket showing your incoming train was late, and a ticket showing your outbound train that you've missed – there's only really one thing you could be asking for!
I really love how people live there in increasingly better conditions and not only outpacing other countries economically, but also making huge efforts in creating a fair, enjoyable and sociable environment for everyone.
Curious if you visited any Tibetan areas (Tibet proper or Amdo) and talked with the people there and how fair the system is for them.
Even the Germans in 1938 were faster with a Car on the "Autobahn" :D
"Driving a Mercedes-Benz W125 Rekordwagen, essentially a W125 with streamlined bodywork and a larger engine, Caracciola set a new average speed of 432.7 kilometres per hour (268.9 mph) for the flying kilometre and 432.4 kilometres per hour (268.7 mph) for the flying mile..."
-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Caracciola
The point isn't really how fast it is, the point is how fast it is AS well as how connected it is to China. You have French trains that go 600 km/h or whatever and that's cool yes but have you seen a French transit system at that speed connecting the entire country together? Nope
I don't envy the guy with the job of getting this right.
The last train wreck in China is still being talked about. Not because of the tragedy of the accident, but because of how it became emblematic of corruption and cover-ups and realities that are "unpatriotic" to say out loud. I guarantee any problems with this train line and you are sure to see someone bought up on "corruption charges".
Immediately after the accident in question, the local authorities smashed the trains with backhoes and buried them in pits in the ground. No accident here, no sirree, just carry right along.
It's fairly trivial to travel at 300km/h on a motorcycle with far more severe packaging constraints of fuel and powertrain, awful aerodynamics, and no rails to glide down.
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After departure it doesn't take more than a handful minutes before the train reaches its desired speed of just over 300km/h and it remains consistent at this speed for the entire journey unless it has to stop at a station.
I wish Europe was so well connected via such an efficient and affordable train system. I think then we could easily raise the tax on airplanes to ridiculous premiums and happily expect people to entirely ditch short distance flights.
China is doing amazing things and they get way too little credit for all the innovative things they do. Unfortunately we only get to read the negatives, but I went back to China again and I really love how people live there in increasingly better conditions and not only outpacing other countries economically, but also making huge efforts in creating a fair, enjoyable and sociable environment for everyone.
Say what you want, but you'll never understand until you've been there yourself and experienced China first hand yourself. It's nothing what the media makes us believe!
...
> I saw no evidence of any such effort to create a fair system.
As fast as China is developing, it takes more than a few years of a snapshot expat life in a tier1-2 city to appreciate the scale of uplifting. The evidence is everywhere if are familiar with Chinese development goals and rate progress in context of the Chinese system where inequity and corruption are both intentional and deliberate development strategies.
Inequity: Deng wanted to direct development of coast regions first to rapidly cultivate an economic model (all the SEZs). The lessons learned would be used to improve the interior. The goal is to become a "moderately prosperous society" by 2021 with per capita GDP of $10,000 (current forecast is $12,000), followed by complete urbanization and poverty alleviation by 2030, followed by "China Dream" of per capita GDP of $40,000 by 2050. Some of the coastal cities are currently at $20,000 or $40,000 by PPP.
The system is working as intended, the big current efforts is to redirect coastal manufacturing and wealth into interior development which has "unfairly" languished, but as someone who spend a decade travelling between tier1 and county level (i.e too backwater to even be on the tier system) in the 90s, there's been improvements in aggregate everywhere. It may feel uneven depending on time and place but the trend is undeniable.
Corruption: to preserve the political narrative of "socialist economy", corruption was a mechanism used to transfer state resources to meritocratically selected local party officials that was still beholden to the goal of development and growth to ensure future promotions. This is why corruption has bad in India, Russia, Indonesia, Ukraine, etc but good in China. China is the only country where increased corruption is correlated to increased growth. This is posited by Yukon Huang, former World Bank director for China, Russia, and Former Soviet Union Republics. Power and connections only go so far (and sometimes too far), but most low tier bureaucratic arise through performance. They're welcome to gaft a little on the side but they better build X new residential units, Y infrastructure to meet Z urbanization goals.
E: It's not perfect, especially rule of law, but these institutions usually take a long time to build. Somethings can be rushed (construction), somethings can't (integration), but it's China, despite perceived "patience" of Chinese grand strategy, they'll try to rush things anyway (love them 5,10,15 year plans), frequently it's unethical, sometimes it'll backfire, but moving this fast is an unending series of trolley problems with 1.4 billion lives. Overall, IMO they're doing well. Prioritizing elimination of poverty at the expense of some corruption and inequity is the correct short-term moral calculus for me. And it's not like they're not trying to address the latter (anticorruption, HK etc).
Dead Comment
Every time I go to China (to visit relatives) I expect to be in this sort of dystopic society like how everyone describes it, yet here I find probably the most integrated system of people and technology. Credit cards don't exist, everyone pays via QR code and phone. Tickets are on your phone, a simple monorail travels fast, with security, and the stations are actually clean (unlike NYC). In a certain sense you could say it's the future that you see in some movies. Too bad everything is blocked and you can feel yourself being watched all the time. But I guess that comes with the added benefit of safety in some regards.
Right now, I need a ticket for Germany, France and Spain to get to Barcelona. If any of the trains runs late and I miss a train, I'd have to buy a new ticket for the connecting train.
So a single booking agency with guaranteed connecting trains would be great.
http://www.railteam.eu/en/for-your-journey/network-map/
Unfortunately the network seems to be mostly Belgium, France German, the Netherlands, with egress into Italy, Spain and the UK.
Compare it with India and you will see the same number of stations/trains/bus routes all subsidized and dirt cheap (compared to Europe), but far below in any other standard (naturally because they are poorer).
Get the conductor on the delayed train to endorse your ticket proving the train ran late (or give you something saying so, if you have a digital ticket).
When the train arrives, if your next train is a "reservation only" service, you should go to the desk of the train operator, show them your ticket from the late-arriving train endorsed with the delay and your ticket for the outbound train that you've missed, and they'll give you a new ticket for the next train with availability.
If the next train isn't a "reservation only" service I usually just get on and sort it out with the conductor. I think technically you're not supposed to do this, but it saves time so can allow you to take an earlier train, and I've never had a problem doing it. YMMV!
I've done this probably 8 times, and never encountered someone who couldn't speak English well enough to understand the situation. In fact, very little communication is necessary since you're holding an endorsed ticket showing your incoming train was late, and a ticket showing your outbound train that you've missed – there's only really one thing you could be asking for!
Curious if you visited any Tibetan areas (Tibet proper or Amdo) and talked with the people there and how fair the system is for them.
Or Xinjiang, where most of the PRC's Uighur's live. This article shows some of them using the train system, too -- as they are led away blindfolded and in shackles: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/23/china-footage-...
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Dead Comment
The non-prototype record is set by the French TGV in 2007: 574.8 km/h
But even in China trains have been traveling at 486.1 km/h in 2010 (Beijing–Shanghai HSR).
Not to be outdone, an Amtrak train reached a record 38.5 hours late to Penn Station on the same day.
Dead Comment
But of course the "top speed" without passenger is much much higher.
"Driving a Mercedes-Benz W125 Rekordwagen, essentially a W125 with streamlined bodywork and a larger engine, Caracciola set a new average speed of 432.7 kilometres per hour (268.9 mph) for the flying kilometre and 432.4 kilometres per hour (268.7 mph) for the flying mile..." -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Caracciola
The last train wreck in China is still being talked about. Not because of the tragedy of the accident, but because of how it became emblematic of corruption and cover-ups and realities that are "unpatriotic" to say out loud. I guarantee any problems with this train line and you are sure to see someone bought up on "corruption charges".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wenzhou_train_collision#Wang_Y...
It's fairly trivial to travel at 300km/h on a motorcycle with far more severe packaging constraints of fuel and powertrain, awful aerodynamics, and no rails to glide down.