China has become the country with the fastest development, most complete systematic technologies, strongest assembly capacity, the greatest length of track, highest operational speed and the largest project scale of high-speed railways in the world, representatives from the Ministry of Railways said recently.
China has put 355 multiple-unit trains into operation, including 234 trains that can reach 250 kilometers per hour and 121 trains that can reach 350 kilometers per hour. The trains have safely traveled 280 million kilometers and transported more than 500 million passengers, according to data from the ministry.
So far, China's high-speed railways are mainly in the three large economic zones, the Yangtze River Delta, the Pearl River Delta and the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei economic zone. Just in 2009, the average local GDP of the three zones had increased by as high as 10 percent, 1.7 percentage points higher than the growth rate of China's total GDP.
In the same year, the GDP of the three zones accounted for 44 percent of the GDP of China, up three percentage points compared to that of 2008. Experts believe that China's high-speed railways have become a booster for China's regional economic integration. China is coming into a "high-speed railway era" and China's high-speed railway economy is taking shape.
High-speed railways: New engine for China's regional economic integration
On Aug. 1, 2010, the Beijing-Tianjin High-Speed Railway, the first high-speed railway in China, celebrated its two-year anniversary. Since the railway was put into operation two years ago, the economic development of Beijing and Tianjin has been accelerating rapidly.
The economy of Tianjin increased by more than 16 percent both in 2008 and 2009, much higher than the economic growth rate of all of China. In 2009, the local GDP of Tianjin was nearly 1.2 trillion yuan, up more than 10 percent compared to that of 2008.
Data shows that the Yangtze River Delta, with a land area accounting for more than 2 percent of China's total land area and a population accounting for 11 percent of China's total population, accounted for more than 27 percent of China's total GDP, nearly 25 percent of China's total government revenue and more than 47 percent of China's total import and export volume.
Of the wealth accumulated by Jiangsu province, more than 60 percent came from the regions along the Shanghai-Nanjing High-Speed Railway. Investigations show that the Shanghai-Nanjing High-Speed Railway will increase the GDP of the cities along its route by 1 percent annually.
Wu Wenhua, vice director of the Comprehensive Transportation Research Institute of the Academy of Macroeconomic Research under the National Development and Reform Commission, said the construction of high-speed railways can directly lead to an investment increase and the operation of completed high-speed railways can enlarge the passenger flow and promote the economic development of the regions along the railways.
Therefore, high-speed railways are in accordance with China's economic development policy of "expanding domestic demand, maintaining economic growth and adjusting the economic structure." High-speed railways are also good for connecting the central and western regions with the economically-developed eastern regions of China. This can greatly help the industrial transfer from the eastern regions to the central and western regions, and help China form an east-to-west economic development structure.
"One-city Effect" pushes the high-speed railway economy
As China possesses a large population and a vast territory, the time and space span between China's economy and society is huge. Uneven population distribution and economic development in China determines that the production and market consumption need to be connected using a high-speed, long-distance and large-capacity rail transport channel.
"The operation of high-speed railways has substantially increased the cargo and passenger transport capacity of transportation channels and promoted the inter-regional rapid flow of human resources, material goods, capital and information flow. It has become an important guarantee for the development of regional coordination," said Su Shunhu, deputy director of the Transportation Bureau of the Ministry of Railways.
When the Wuhan-Guangzhou High-Speed Railway was put into operation, a large number of businesspeople from home and aboard observed the commercial opportunities of the high-speed railway, and this caused an investment boom along the line. As Wuhan and Xianning can directly benefit from the operation of the high-speed railway, the GDP of the two cities both increased nearly 16 percent in the first quarter of 2010.
In addition, the tourism revenue of the two cities increased by nearly 37 percent and nearly 167 percent, respectively; the real estate investments increased by nearly 73 percent and nearly 45 percent, respectively; the urban fixed asset investments increased by nearly 37 percent and nearly 59 percent, respectively; the actual foreign direct investments increased by more than 21 percent and nearly 26 percent, respectively and the total retail sales of consumer goods increased by nearly 18 percent and nearly 22 percent, respectively.
Beijing-Shanghai High-Speed Railway to show 'dumbbell effect'
The track-laying work of the Beijing-Shanghai High-Speed Railway recently started after a track-laying machine quietly laid a 500-meter-long rail at the Xuzhou East Station. This marked the shift of the engineering construction of the world's longest high-speed railway with the highest standards from civil engineering to track engineering. It is estimated that the railway will be put into operation by 2012.
The maximum speed of the Beijing-Shanghai High-Speed Railway is 350 kilometers per hour and can shorten the travel time for a distance of 1,318 kilometers between Beijing and Shanghai to less than four hours. The round-way passenger transportation capacity of the railway will reach 160 million a year.
"We can see on a map that the two ends of the Beijing-Shanghai High-Speed Railway connect China's two major economic zones: the Bohai Sea Rim and the Yangtze River Delta economic zones. Such a relationship is just like a dumbbell. The Bohai Sea Rim and the Yangtze River Delta act as the two balls of a dumbbell and the railway acts as its bar.
According to initial research and estimations, upon the completion of the Beijing-Shanghai High-Speed Railway, the "dumbbell effect" will lift the GDP growth rates of the regions along the railway by about 19 to 21 percentage points.
