China is building rail lines with top speeds of 236 mph. The US is building trains that max out at 110 mph. But before you start exclaiming that we need to emulate Chinese, read this from the Financial Times:
?This high-speed programme is a political project with little economic value,? says Zhao Jian, a professor at Beijing Jiaotong University who favours conventional rail rather than high-speed projects. ?The government just wants to have the biggest and fastest number one train set in the world.?
And the trains in both countries are being built with money neither government has. ?This is a real debt crisis building up for the government and it is going to break at some point,? Zhao said.
