China and the New Rail Lines

The front pages of international newspapers always reveal interesting things. In its edition on Oct. 27, the Financial Times called attention to the inauguration of the high-speed rail line between Beijing and Tianjin. This type of train is a symbol of political and technological prestige.

In his column on Wednesday in The New York Times, Thomas Friedman compared the time to travel by rail between Washington and New York with the route from Beijing to Tianjin. The first trip takes three hours and is rarely on time. On the other side of the Pacific, the same trip would take only 90 minutes. For Friedman, this shows the enormous difference between the U.S. and China in terms of investment in infrastructure.

There is, in fact, another manner of looking at what is happening with rail links in China. If we follow the tracks, we can better understand Beijing’s domestic political agenda and its focus at the regional level.

Domestically, railroads are seen by decision makers in China as essential for developing provinces in the country’s interior. A recent report by The Economist Intelligence Unit highlighted the rate at which urbanization in China is taking place. In 2020, the country will have an additional 143 million people living in cities, and at that time some 800 million Chinese will live in urbanized areas. Many of these cities, such as Chongqing, Hefei, Anshan, Maanshan, Pingdingshan and Shenyang, are practically unknown outside of China. Railroads will be essential in the development of this new phase of the economic geography of China.

Railroads also play a crucial role in terms of maintaining geopolitical control of the borders. The best example is the long rail line that linked Beijing to Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, at the end of 2005. Apart from representing a considerable feat of engineering, this line, which is more than 4,000 km [2,500 miles] long, has a double strategic function for China. First, to guarantee control over Tibet. Second, to open China’s lines of economic and military communications all the way up to the border with India. At the end of September, Beijing announced the construction of a new rail line between Lhasa and Shigatse, Tibet’s second most important city, which is located in the southwest of the province. Here, rail lines are a symbol of Chinese power.

At the international level, the plans for Chinese railroads also illustrate some important points. The situation in the South China Sea helps to explain these plans. Approximately a third of the world’s maritime trade passes through this sea, as well as half of the petroleum that supplies the Northeast of China, Japan and the Korean peninsula. Beijing regards this sea as being its naval lifeline and, to the great irritation of its neighbors, has demonstrated this year a great determination to take control of what goes on there. The problem is that the U.S., the great naval power in recent decades, stands in the way and controls access to the Indian Ocean through the Strait of Malacca. In the coming decade, one of the most important questions relating to security and the international economy will be the manner in which the political and military leaders of Washington manage this problem.

This state of affairs has led China to try to obtain direct access to the Bay of Bengal in the Indian Ocean. Such access would not in any way be a substitute for influence and power in the South China Sea, but it nonetheless represents an interesting alternative for the foreign policy of Beijing. The best examples of this attempt to circumvent the geographic obstacles and the U.S. naval presence are the gas and oil pipelines that will link the Bay of Bengal to the south of China, and the recently announced construction of a rail link between Kunming, capital of Yunnan province, and Rangoon, the Burmese capital.

Trains are a good guide for understanding the evolution of China’s domestic and foreign policy.