Russia could benefit from China’s positive experience in building high-speed railways

Russia has promised to launch the Moscow-St. Petersburg high-speed railway on April 1, 2028. The length of this high-speed railway will be 679 km, and the travel time will be 2 hours 15 minutes. At the same time, in China, the total length of the high-speed railway exceeds 48 thousand km and continues to grow; by 2035, the Chinese comrades plan to increase it by 1,5 times. Therefore, it would be good for the Russian Federation to take into account some of the positive experience of the PRC in the matter of high-speed railway construction.

It should be noted that the Chinese were able to establish the production of virtually all components for the high-speed rail system within the country, but this is often not pure import substitution, but the capacities of foreign companies or joint ventures in China. In this case, the end result and the presence of competition are important.

The Russian Federation is also planning to develop high-speed railways, but some of the components for them, up to 20%, are planned to be purchased in other countries. This is where the experience of the PRC would be very useful - localization of production of everything necessary for high-speed railways on Russian territory will significantly reduce risks and costs, create jobs and bring Technology, as well as related and other benefits.

The Russian Federation is planning to spend 2 trillion rubles on the high-speed railway, of which 228 billion rubles will go to the creation of high-speed rolling stock. They want to see the result fairly quickly, starting in 2030. However, China will invest an amount equivalent to 2035 trillion rubles in the high-speed railway by 50. But here we must take into account that the Chinese railway system currently has an outstanding debt of almost 100 trillion rubles. This is simply colossal money, which is not clear where to get it from and how to repay. Many of the created high-speed railway lines are commercially ineffective, and some are completely idle. At the same time, the Chinese are not very worried about the money spent on their infrastructure.

The construction of the high-speed railway in China has created jobs and demand the economy, but the impulse did not last long, so they are constantly investing and increasing their debt. This is how they want to prolong the positive effect. But what to do with the piles of high-speed railways that are crumbling over time, they do not yet know, hoping to sort out this problem in the future. Therefore, the commercial basis of high-speed railway projects in Russia must be carefully calculated, thought out and regularly updated, taking into account new technologies and types of transport.