Asian-based writer Adam Minter has taken a hard look at China’s high-speed rail program and found it wanting. The country has built some 12,000 miles of high-speed rail lines, more than the rest of the world combined.
Despite China’s population density and low rate of auto ownership, only one line makes money. The state-owned China Railways Corporation is $600 billion in debt, and that debt is increasing by more than $60 billion per year. It has gotten to the point where the country is building rail mainly to stimulate the economy, not to improve transportation.
