The first High Speed Rail (HSR) train ran in China in 2008 from Beijing to Tianjin on 113km of track.
China’s HSR network today, at 18, 000km, is four times larger than Japan’s, 6x larger than France’s and 8x larger than Germany’s. It’s also, literally, infinitely larger than the U.S.’s which is, at present, non-existent.
Contrary to what many believe the technology for this system is a combination of home grown talent and bought and paid for foreign collaboration.
The authors of the paper, Zhenhua Chen of Ohio State University and Kingsley E. Haynes of Georgetown University were motivated in their work wondering if this development model could work elsewhere in the world?
They seem to conclude (without saying as much) the answer is no. Technology ‘leap-frogging’ is fine in theory but unless, like China, you’ve got a solid base of expertise and a government capable of coordinating cooperation among a vast network of equipment and service providers you’ll struggle.
That’s the main point of the paper. For the rest it’s a trainspotters dream as the researchers go into minute detail of which models were imported and how they were modified to morph into made-in and later developed-in China models.
You can access all the details via this link Technology Transfer and Capture
Happy Sunday.