America can learn from China’s amazing high-speed rail network

China already had an extensive conventional railway network, one of the few infrastructure achievements of the Mao era.

The Ministry of Railways began planning China’s high-speed rail network in the 1990s. The high-speed railway network, trains, and services are owned and operated by the China Railway Corporation (CRC). Trains have always been important in communist China — CRC is a powerful state-owned organization that, until recently, had its own police force, prosecutors office, and court system.

Aside from the 18,000 miles of high-speed tracks, CRC also operates roughly 60,000 miles of regular-speed passenger and cargo railways.

Although some key technology was acquired in deals with foreign partners, CRC now makes all of its trains and railways using its own intellectual property. The company is also open for business in any country that has the money — or willingness to go into debt — to finance construction.

Construction began in 2001 on the Shanghai Maglev or Shanghai Transrapid (上海磁浮示范运营线 shànghǎi cífú shìfàn yùnyíng xiàn) — a magnetic levitation train that takes passengers part of the way (alas!) into the city at speeds of 268 miles per hour. At a cost of around $1.2 billion, the line opened in 2004 and has never made a profit.

The high cost and the reluctance of German companies Siemens and ThyssenKrupp to share key technologies that power the maglev (for magnetic levitation) led China to opt for the slower “conventional” electric high-speed technology that CRC mastered with some help from its early partners.