CHINA-TRANSPORT: New Year Begins, Commuters Face Same Old Problem

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Rajiv Chandra

BEIJING, Feb 19 1996 (IPS) - Exhausted, Liu Yueping half-dozed amid her baggage outside the massive Beijing West Railway Station.

Liu was on her way home to Hebei province with her husband to celebrate the Chinese Lunar New Year with relatives. But the couple, who had already traveled for a day and a half from Ningxia province where they live, were unable to get their tickets confirmed for the rest of their journey.

Facing the exodus of millions of Chinese home for the New Year which began Monday, officials are trying to control the flow of passengers by refusing to endorse tickets if trains are full.

“My husband went to try to get our tickets confirmed,” said Liu. “We may have to bribe someone or otherwise buy an endorsed ticket on the black market.”

China’s airports and train and bus stations are swamped with millions of travelers making their annual pilgrimage home for the Feb. 19 Lunar New Year, China’s most important holiday. From Hong Kong, nearly 260,000 people returned to their native provinces in China, official Chinese news agencies reported.

During the 50-day season that also heralds the Spring Festival that started on Jan 30, 143 million people are expected to travel by train, up by more than seven per cent from last year, according to the official press; six million others are expected to fly, requiring 3,500 extra flights; while millions of people will take buses for shorter trips home.

The holiday exodus has exploded in recent years to include millions of Chinese villagers who have migrated to cities in search of better jobs and make only one trip back to their home villages every year.

China’s transportation system may be overrun with people during the holiday season. But even in less busy times, the air, rail and road network is overburdened and struggling to handle demand. Years of neglect and lack of transport investment has left China with one of the world’s thinnest rail and highway networks, lagging behind Brazil, India and Russia.

Although market-style reforms have spurred economic growth of an average ten per cent over the last decade, severe transportation bottlenecks hinder faster development, Western analysts say.

A 1993 study by the World Bank estimated China lost one per cent of its gross national product or up to five billion dollars yearly due to a poor transport infrastructure. Inadequate road, rail and water links keep coal, China’s major power source, and other raw materials from reaching booming coastal regions.

To make up for lost time, China has made transportation a top priority. Up until the turn of the century, Beijing plans to spend up to 50 billion dollars dramatically expanding its rail network and boosting freight capacity from the coal-rich north-west to southern coastal cities.

During the 1990s, the skeletal highway system will be expanded by one-fifth, linking almost all major regional and provincial cities, especially around the central Chinese hubs of Wuhan and Zhengzhou.

Nineteen airports are being built, expanded or improved, and seven cities plan to complete subway or light-rail projects by the turn of the century.

Still, Chinese transport planners can barely keep pace with growing demand. Since China launched its open-door economic policy in 1979, inter-city freight traffic has grown on average eight per cent and passenger traffic has increased an average 12 per cent yearly.

“Imperial China relied on waterways. The favourite transport in Mao’s China was railways. Only in the last 20 years has China started to think about other modes of transportation,” says an economist at the World Bank. “There’s no question in terms of mere capacity that they are nowhere near about to cope with their needs.”

A high-profile cornerstone of the massive transport expansion is the 4.8 billion dollar, 2500-km rail link between Beijing and Kowloon in Hong Kong. Anchoring the line, which will be finished before British-controlled Hong Kong reverts to Chinese rule in 1997, is the new 518 million dollar Beijing West Railway Station, Asia’s largest.

A towering monument to Hong Kong’s impending return to China, the sprawling station with pagoda-style turrets will be able to handle up to 90 pairs of trains and more than 100,000 passengers daily, double the capacity of the current Beijing station.

Although still unfinished and lacking water and electricity in parts of the building, the station was rushed into operation as a public relations move before the Chinese New Year.

“Back in 1959 when the old Beijing Railway Station was open, (Premier) Zhou Enlai said that China must build another, bigger station,” said Deng Jianzhong, a Communist Party official at the railway station. “We have now show what we can achieve.”

China is financing 80 per cent of the transportation expansion itself, but the government still must rely on local and overseas borrowing. It’s two largest international lenders are the Japanese government and the World Bank.

In recent years, private foreign investors have also been drawn by the promise of China’s transport sector. However, during the last two years, their enthusiasm has cooled as high-profile projects like the Guangzhou-Kowloon highway, financed by Hong Kong tycoon Gordon Wu, encountered contractual conflicts with the Chinese government.