We rose at an ungodly hour to ensure that we would beat the traffic and make it to our 7:30 train from Chongqingbei to Beijingshi. While we were aboard, we received a lecture by two representatives from the ‘Research and Innovation’ sector of the China Rail Corporation, about China’s growing high-speed rail system. A few statistics of note: 70% of the world’s rail kilometrage is in China, and in 2023 the rail system there had a personage of 2.8 billion. The representatives emphasized safety, accessibility, affordability, sustainability and comfort for the rider as the primary concerns of the rail corporation.
Rail travel ultimately creates the effect of compressing the temporal and embodied experience of traveling through space, and is inherently discerning between spaces that are incorporated into a system of connection, and those that are not. More and more different spaces and places through the country are being connected by rail, starting between the most ‘metropolitan’ areas, and also connecting them with tourist cities. He explained that a city would have to have a population of over 500,000 people before it qualified for a high speed rail station.
He spoke about a brand new high speed rail line opened in Indonesia in the last several years, as an example of China exporting their infrastructure innovation with other countries. A member of the group posed a question on this point, saying that through her personal relationships she knows that local people are not happy with the rail line there. He said that since he was unfortunately not a foreign diplomat, he could not speak on that.