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(This commentary first appeared on March 28, 2011.) This year China endured its grueling 40-day annual chunyun -- theepic "spring movement" of an estimated 120 millionpeople traveling long distances home and back during the Lunar NewYear interlude. This took place right after China entered itsglittering bullet-train age last year. As in the past twentyyears, most of the passengers were migrant workers making theironce-a-year trip to reunite with their families in the homevillage. The annual logistical challenge of moving such a hugepopulation in a short time, as shown in the scramble for a ticketand the chaos and extreme overcrowding in rundown rail cars, iswell captured in Lixin Fan"s acclaimed documentary, LastTrain Home, with its sumptuous visuals. One might have expected this year"s chunyun to be lesstorturous for migrant passengers than in years past with theaddition of numerous new high-speed rail lines. As it turned out,this year"s spectacle was no less chaotic than in the past.One Chinese reporter even calls it the hardest in history. China"s state-owned and run bullet-train system, constructedat a record speed (and at a record cost of about 2 trillion yuan sofar), have won almost universal praise. Today it has 8,358 km ofhigh-speed rail in operation compared to zero three years ago.Obama"s State of the Union speech alluded to its speedinessin an admiring tone. I also happened to ride a Chinese bullet trainlast year and loved it: just like those I had taken elsewhere, Ifound it clean, comfortable and, of course, super fast. Thesestate-of-the-art bullet trains have become an icon of China"sgreat leap forward to superpower status in the 21st century. Behind the glamour, however, some skeptics were worried that thismulti-trillion yuan project is a fertile ground for corruption. Theconcern has turned out to be well founded: the Minister of Railwaysis currently at the center of an investigation for corruption. Andhis delinquencies, as reported widely in the Chinese press, arefamiliar ones: he is charged with kickbacks, fraud, tendering bigcontracts to companies run by cronies, and engaging in affairs withnumerous young mistresses, some of whom helped cut those deals. Even more worrying to the public is that beneath the newly-laidtracks, there are potentially serious safety risks, as somefoundations were put down hastily. These recent shocking revelations now seem to have turned this onceflashy icon of progress into the poster-child of China"slatest infrastructure express rife with graft and run amok withlittle oversight and accountability. More important, this"development" also represents a significantredistribution of public resources from the poor to the rich. Indeed, it means less efficient and more inequitable publictransportation system, with increased safety risks. Chunyun 2011 is a telling example. Though the new high-speed trainshad added notable rail capacity, ironically the migrant massesfound it harder to get train tickets home. Many conventional trainswere taken off the rails to make room for the fast ones, but theirtickets were too expensive to most migrant travelers. This createda holiday crunch even worse than usual for seats on the regulartrains. As a result, hordes of low-income travelers were pushedback onto cramped buses or forced to try something extraordinary toget home. Press reports of several chunyun transportation dramas have caughtpublic attention in the last month. They tell the struggle of thehave-nots being left behind in the new bullet-train age. After queuing for a train ticket home, and being third in the linefor 14 hours without success, a migrant in Zhejiang unveiled hisunderpants in public to protest. In the south, a migrant couple didnot even attempt to get a train ticket. Instead, loaded withluggage and their 6-year-old son, they rode a motorbike for elevenhours, braving numbing wintry weather for 320 km. Many more did thesame despite the icy weather, and soon there were swarms ofmotorbikes on many highways, with police escorts helping in someinstances. In an even more extreme case, after failing to get aregular train or bus ticket, eleven young migrants decided toimplement Plan C and jogged 130 km home together across frigidNorth China. The seat shortage prompted China"s railway authorities tocrack down on rampant scalping, demanding that train tickets soldat some major hubs be issued with real names and matched with IDswhen checking in. Indeed, 1,800 scalpers were caught in the firstweek of the chunyun. Moreover, in an unprecedented demonstration oftransparency, the rail authorities opened their ticket officesacross the nation to 1,000 outside "inspectors" tomonitor ticket sales and operations, and also threatened stiffsanctions on any rail employees involved in back-doorticket-trading. At the same time, some high-speed trains were leaving stations onlyhalf full, even in the peak holiday season. Three lawyers in remote Xinjiang pleaded openly for the railauthorities to offer discounted high-speed train tickets formigrant laborers to help fill up the empty seats. The lawyers alsopointed out that these trains are public investments and should bemade affordable to the commoner. The new trains may serve well for China"s middle class asthey provide more comfortable rides than flying at similar prices.However, the size of this consuming class is no larger than 300million (not 800 million, as the Asian Development Bank hasclaimed) and even this population"s average income is onlyabout one third of its counterpart in Japan or the US. Mostly onbusiness, China"s high-speed train passengers are notnumerous enough to financially sustain this vast -- theworld"s largest -- system of expensive bullet trains. Theremaining one-billion-plus low-income masses, especially thosebadly wanting to make that annual trip to see their families,however, cannot afford the new trains and are left behind toscramble for the ever fewer slow ones. With the disgraced rail minister"s career now heading to atrain wreck, the planned high speed of building another 8,000 kmbullet-train lines and spending another 3.5 trillion yuan in thecoming five years of the 12th Five-year Plan should be seriouslycalled into question. Slowing down the high-speed train projectwill also help cool down China"s destabilizing inflation. It is high time that China"s high-speed trains put on thebrakes -- based on grounds of efficiency, equity and financialviability! Kam Wing Chan is a professor in geography at the University ofWashington. His research focuses on China"s migration laborand urbanization. We are high quality suppliers, our products such as Nylon Lace Fabric Manufacturer , China Beaded Lace Fabric for oversee buyer. To know more, please visits Nylon Lace Fabric.
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