Great Firewall of China getting harder to scale:
The Straits Times - December 30, 2012
By Ho Ai Li, China Correspondent
Exchange student Lim Wee Kiat, 35, let out a cry of joy at the thought of wrapping up months of research here and going home to Singapore.
"Hallelujah!" he told The Sunday Times two days before he left Beijing on Boxing Day.
It was not so much the glacial weather as the glacial Internet speeds and patchy connection that had made his life frustrating here.
Many foreign websites are blocked here, along with social media sites such as Facebook, under Web controls popularly known as the Great Firewall of China.
But foreigners and a small group of Chinese have been scaling this wall by using a VPN, or virtual private network.
Now, this lifeline is becoming frayed as the authorities tighten Internet controls again, a move likely to hit foreign research and business operations in China.
Paid VPN services were greatly disrupted in the lead-up to the Communist Party's leadership change last month, and things still have not gone back to normal.
Some providers such as Astrill have had to apologise to their subscribers for the disruption.
Access to Google-linked websites has also become rather erratic, as Mr Lim, who depends on Google for searches, would attest to.
According to The Global Times, a nationalistic English-language newspaper, China has beefed up its cyberwall, making it even harder for Web surfers here to circumvent its controls.
More curbs are on the cards: The National People's Congress, China's legislature, gave the green light on Friday to new rules requiring Net users to register real names and to increase the penalties for those who spread untruths online.
"Overall, since commercial Internet access began in China back in 1995, there has been a steady increase in the level and scope of censorship," Mr Duncan Clark, a consultant who has lived in China for 18 years, told The Sunday Times.
While VPN providers, in particular the free ones, have been blocked in the past, paid ones costing US$5 (S$6) to US$7 a month have generally been left untouched, he noted.
"Recently, though, the government has clearly been targeting these VPN providers, preventing new customers from signing up," said Mr Clark, who is chairman of BDA Consultancy.
It is also disabling existing subscribers - especially those using L2TP services, as opposed to PP2P ones, which offer dynamic IP addresses and are perhaps harder to target - he added.
Businesses have also been hit as many depend on VPNs to share confidential data and access global work processes such as payroll, he said.
The efficiency of businesses in getting information from the Internet has been hit by China's enhanced firewall, the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China told German broadcaster Deutsche Welle.
But protests by foreigners and foreign businesses are unlikely to matter, said Hong Kong-based activist Wen Yunchao. Instead, the authorities want to control the flow of information on the Net during a period of leadership transition, he told The Sunday Times.
"They have to prevent dissension and information from outside coming in," he said. Some officials might have been leaking information to overseas Chinese websites to bring down their foes, he added.
The websites of The New York Times and Bloomberg continue to be blocked in China after they ran reports detailing the wealth and connections of the families of leaders Xi Jinping and Wen Jiabao in June and November.
There has also been talk that the move to strengthen Web controls is linked to the growing use of micro- blogs to expose official wrongdoing. In recent weeks, whistle-blowers have posted online allegations of misdeeds such as graft, forgery and blackmail by officials.
But media expert Zhan Jiang of the Beijing Foreign Studies University warns against reading too much into the recent online whistle-blowing and the proposed new Internet rules, saying it is unclear why VPN services have been hit.
What is certain, though, is that the VPN disturbance has given companies and individuals a lot of headaches.
It may exact a heavy cost on China in the long run as it goes against China's bid to become a creative and innovative country, said Mr Clark.
Many foreign organisations may choose to move elsewhere if the going remains tough, he added.
However, Beijing resident Lum Kayli, 27, who has been having problems with her VPN service, had resigned herself to Internet curbs even before moving here from Malaysia eight months ago.
"It's annoying but what can you do?" she said.
hoaili@sph.com.sg
Monday, December 31, 2012
Sunday, December 30, 2012
Why 2013 Will Be the Worst Year Ever for China Tech
Why 2013 Will Be the Worst Year Ever for China Tech:
Amidst all the 2012 in review madness, I thought it might be fun to turn our eyes to the future for a moment and make some predictions about what’s coming in 2013. Well, “fun” is a relative term. Call me a pessimist, but I think 2013 is going to be the worst year ever for China’s tech industry. Why
Internet censorship will get worse. China’s Great Firewall got an upgrade this month, and the blockage of many popular VPNs has already begun to affect businesses. There’s no reason to expect that will get any better in the new year, with government mouthpiece the People’s Daily calling for stricter internet regulation and reports suggesting the government may implement mandatory real-name registration for anyone who wants to get on the internet at all. All indications are that next year, China’s internet is going to be less free than ever before.
Social media censorship will get worse. Sina Weibo had a pretty ridiculous year when it comes to censorship, but with the new 7-day search delay and rumors of a new, more thorough real-name system don’t make the future sound all that bright. But the bad news isn’t just limited to Weibo; we have seen indications that the government is concerned about newcomer WeChat — even as it uses the service to track dissidents — so expect that to get a censorship smackdown in the coming year, too.
The mobile market will be restricted. One of China’s tech regulatory bodies, MIIT, is planning to reach its cold, bony hands into the world of mobile app development and sales. Exactly how that will turn out isn’t yet clear, but MIIT’s regulatory processes are the reason an iPhone takes an extra three months to come out in China. App developers are understandably concerned that they’re going to be slowed down — which can be a death sentence in the fast-paced mobile ecosystem — or censored, or very possibly both. Whatever happens with this round of regulation, I would guess that this won’t be the only time we see MIIT interfering in the mobile space in 2013.
More state control is coming, or at least is planned. While the government has been pushing state-owned companies to operate like real companies and try to actually make money rather, it hasn’t gone to much effort to support domestic innovators in the private sector. For example, SARFT (China’s fun police and film censorship bureau) recently smacked-down Chinese startup Xiaomi’s attempts to get into the TV game, and it has also established a state-run subsidiary company that it hopes will control the domestic internet, mobile, and television industries.
All of this is bad for business. In addition to just being off-putting and restrictive, almost all of this is bad for business and development. China’s internet is increasingly isolated from the rest of the world’s, which stifles domestic innovation and discourages foreign investment. And China’s restrictive policies, coupled with the unethical behavior of some high-profile Chinese tech companies, have helped ensure that it is tougher than ever for Chinese tech companies to expand overseas.
Now, are there some signs of good things, too? Of course. Smartphone and broadband penetration are up and will likely continue climbing rapidly throughout next year. Internet speeds are getting faster, and we might even see China’s first 4G network in 2013 (but probably not). Still, though, speed and access are less meaningful when the number of things you can actually do on China’s internet seems to be dwindling by the day.
I think 2013 will be the worst year ever for the web/tech industry in China. Here’s hoping that I’m really, really wrong.
Amidst all the 2012 in review madness, I thought it might be fun to turn our eyes to the future for a moment and make some predictions about what’s coming in 2013. Well, “fun” is a relative term. Call me a pessimist, but I think 2013 is going to be the worst year ever for China’s tech industry. Why
Internet censorship will get worse. China’s Great Firewall got an upgrade this month, and the blockage of many popular VPNs has already begun to affect businesses. There’s no reason to expect that will get any better in the new year, with government mouthpiece the People’s Daily calling for stricter internet regulation and reports suggesting the government may implement mandatory real-name registration for anyone who wants to get on the internet at all. All indications are that next year, China’s internet is going to be less free than ever before.
Social media censorship will get worse. Sina Weibo had a pretty ridiculous year when it comes to censorship, but with the new 7-day search delay and rumors of a new, more thorough real-name system don’t make the future sound all that bright. But the bad news isn’t just limited to Weibo; we have seen indications that the government is concerned about newcomer WeChat — even as it uses the service to track dissidents — so expect that to get a censorship smackdown in the coming year, too.
The mobile market will be restricted. One of China’s tech regulatory bodies, MIIT, is planning to reach its cold, bony hands into the world of mobile app development and sales. Exactly how that will turn out isn’t yet clear, but MIIT’s regulatory processes are the reason an iPhone takes an extra three months to come out in China. App developers are understandably concerned that they’re going to be slowed down — which can be a death sentence in the fast-paced mobile ecosystem — or censored, or very possibly both. Whatever happens with this round of regulation, I would guess that this won’t be the only time we see MIIT interfering in the mobile space in 2013.
More state control is coming, or at least is planned. While the government has been pushing state-owned companies to operate like real companies and try to actually make money rather, it hasn’t gone to much effort to support domestic innovators in the private sector. For example, SARFT (China’s fun police and film censorship bureau) recently smacked-down Chinese startup Xiaomi’s attempts to get into the TV game, and it has also established a state-run subsidiary company that it hopes will control the domestic internet, mobile, and television industries.
All of this is bad for business. In addition to just being off-putting and restrictive, almost all of this is bad for business and development. China’s internet is increasingly isolated from the rest of the world’s, which stifles domestic innovation and discourages foreign investment. And China’s restrictive policies, coupled with the unethical behavior of some high-profile Chinese tech companies, have helped ensure that it is tougher than ever for Chinese tech companies to expand overseas.
Now, are there some signs of good things, too? Of course. Smartphone and broadband penetration are up and will likely continue climbing rapidly throughout next year. Internet speeds are getting faster, and we might even see China’s first 4G network in 2013 (but probably not). Still, though, speed and access are less meaningful when the number of things you can actually do on China’s internet seems to be dwindling by the day.
I think 2013 will be the worst year ever for the web/tech industry in China. Here’s hoping that I’m really, really wrong.
TODAYonline | World | China | More bricks added to Great Firewall of China
TODAYonline | World | China | More bricks added to Great Firewall of China:
Tightening of access to sites like YouTube could be tied to recent leadership change
04:45 AM Dec 24, 2012
HONG KONG - China appears to have reinforced its Internet firewall in recent days, blocking some of the leading services that allow people on the mainland to access forbidden sites like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.
International business transactions also are being affected, Internet analysts said. At least three foreign companies - Astrill, WiTopia and StrongVPN - have apologised to customers whose virtual private networks, or VPNs, have been slowed or disabled. VPNs are used to circumvent the Communist government's firewall. The companies, meanwhile, were suggesting some work-arounds.
The Global Times daily, which is affiliated with the Communist Party, acknowledged the firewall had been "upgraded", but it also warned that foreign providers of VPN services were operating illegally.
The Chinese government blocks online searches of politically sensitive terms, smothers embarrassing news events, blocks online messages from dissidents and deletes any microblog posts that it dislikes.
The Great Firewall of China, as it is known, also blocks countless websites that are available to users elsewhere around the world - from pornography sites to news reporting, political activism and religious proselytising. Users on the mainland thus have to use VPNs to reach the banned sites.
Mr Liu Xiao Ming, the Chinese Ambassador to Britain, told the BBC on Friday that there was "a misconception about the Internet and development in China".
"In fact, the Chinese are very much open in terms of the Internet," he said, quoted in an article in The South China Morning Post. "In fact, we have the most number of Internet users in China today."
An estimated 600 million Chinese have access to the Internet.
Foreign businesses also use VPNs not only to safeguard their transactions but also to keep government censors and rival companies from seeing their corporate communications.
Global Times quoted an anonymous executive at a foreign technology company operating in China who said the lack of a VPN would damage the firm's operations.
Mr Josh Ong, China editor of the tech monitoring site The Next Web, said in an interview with the Voice of America that international companies were reporting disruptions in their corporate VPN services.
"A lot of companies have a general policy that they must use their own proxy network in order to transfer data, especially into and out of China," Mr Ong said.
"So you are looking at banks or e-commerce companies, anyone who is transferring very sensitive information, a lot of them use corporate VPNs," he said.
Mr Ong suggested that the tightening of the firewall could be tied to the recent leadership change in the Communist Party.
"It is certainly possible that some of it is just a general flexing of might, kind of coming in with a strong arm to really show who's in control," he said.
"But there is definitely something intentional happening when these VPN services are being restricted."
Ms Barbara Demick, The Los Angeles Times' Bureau Chief in Beijing, offered this cautionary tweet: "Note to Chinese censors: If you pull our VPNs, main Asia news bureaus will have to move to Tokyo. Not good for China." THE NEW YORK TIMES
Tightening of access to sites like YouTube could be tied to recent leadership change
04:45 AM Dec 24, 2012
HONG KONG - China appears to have reinforced its Internet firewall in recent days, blocking some of the leading services that allow people on the mainland to access forbidden sites like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.
International business transactions also are being affected, Internet analysts said. At least three foreign companies - Astrill, WiTopia and StrongVPN - have apologised to customers whose virtual private networks, or VPNs, have been slowed or disabled. VPNs are used to circumvent the Communist government's firewall. The companies, meanwhile, were suggesting some work-arounds.
The Global Times daily, which is affiliated with the Communist Party, acknowledged the firewall had been "upgraded", but it also warned that foreign providers of VPN services were operating illegally.
The Chinese government blocks online searches of politically sensitive terms, smothers embarrassing news events, blocks online messages from dissidents and deletes any microblog posts that it dislikes.
The Great Firewall of China, as it is known, also blocks countless websites that are available to users elsewhere around the world - from pornography sites to news reporting, political activism and religious proselytising. Users on the mainland thus have to use VPNs to reach the banned sites.
Mr Liu Xiao Ming, the Chinese Ambassador to Britain, told the BBC on Friday that there was "a misconception about the Internet and development in China".
"In fact, the Chinese are very much open in terms of the Internet," he said, quoted in an article in The South China Morning Post. "In fact, we have the most number of Internet users in China today."
An estimated 600 million Chinese have access to the Internet.
Foreign businesses also use VPNs not only to safeguard their transactions but also to keep government censors and rival companies from seeing their corporate communications.
Global Times quoted an anonymous executive at a foreign technology company operating in China who said the lack of a VPN would damage the firm's operations.
Mr Josh Ong, China editor of the tech monitoring site The Next Web, said in an interview with the Voice of America that international companies were reporting disruptions in their corporate VPN services.
"A lot of companies have a general policy that they must use their own proxy network in order to transfer data, especially into and out of China," Mr Ong said.
"So you are looking at banks or e-commerce companies, anyone who is transferring very sensitive information, a lot of them use corporate VPNs," he said.
Mr Ong suggested that the tightening of the firewall could be tied to the recent leadership change in the Communist Party.
"It is certainly possible that some of it is just a general flexing of might, kind of coming in with a strong arm to really show who's in control," he said.
"But there is definitely something intentional happening when these VPN services are being restricted."
Ms Barbara Demick, The Los Angeles Times' Bureau Chief in Beijing, offered this cautionary tweet: "Note to Chinese censors: If you pull our VPNs, main Asia news bureaus will have to move to Tokyo. Not good for China." THE NEW YORK TIMES
Saturday, December 29, 2012
火车票价 掀起你的盖头来 | 高铁，高铁票价，火车票价，票价成本 - 新浪新闻
火车票价 掀起你的盖头来|高铁，高铁票价，火车票价，票价成本_新浪新闻:
京广高铁全线贯通了，但“贵死了，半个月工资坐趟高铁”等吐槽，为高铁线路带来了不少尴尬。一张铁路车票，几番提速升值。当价格遇上速度，担不担得起“一分货一分钱”？服务面对受众群，又是否有一些“傲慢与偏见”？
京广高铁全线贯通了，但“贵死了，半个月工资坐趟高铁”等吐槽，为高铁线路带来了不少尴尬。一张铁路车票，几番提速升值。当价格遇上速度，担不担得起“一分货一分钱”？服务面对受众群，又是否有一些“傲慢与偏见”？
China tightens Internet rules - Channel NewsAsia
China tightens Internet rules - Channel NewsAsia
BEIJING: China has approved new rules that require Internet users nationwide to provide real-name identification, state media reported on Friday, as the government increases its already tight online grip.
The National People's Congress (NPC), the country's legislature, adopted the measures at a meeting on Friday, the official Xinhua news agency and other media said.
According to Xinhua, the decision, which came at the end of a five-day session of the NPC Standing Committee, requires Internet users to offer their names as identification to telecommunication service providers when seeking access to their services.
"Network service providers will ask users to provide genuine identification information when signing agreements to grant them access to the Internet, fixed-line telephone or mobile telecommunication services or to allow users to post information publicly," Xinhua said, quoting the decision.
Popular microblogging sites similar to Twitter have been used in China to air grievances and even to reveal wrongdoing by officials, and such muckraking is tolerated when it dovetails with the government's own desire to rein in corruption.
But with more than half a billion Chinese now online, authorities are concerned about the power of the Internet to influence public opinion in a country that maintains tight controls on its traditional media outlets.
Beijing already regularly blocks Internet searches under a vast online censorship system known as the Great Firewall of China, but the growing popularity of microblogs, known as "weibos", has posed a new challenge.
The firewall has been built up over time since the Internet began to develop in China, and uses a range of technologies to block access to particular sites' IP addresses from Chinese computers.
Censors also keep watch on the weibos that have been used to organise protests and challenge official accounts of events such as a deadly 2011 rail crash that sparked fierce criticism of the government.
Dissident artist and fierce government critic Ai Weiwei on Friday criticised efforts to hinder Internet discourse.
"Blocking the Internet, an action that will limit the exchange of information, is an uncivilised and inhumane crime," he said on Twitter, which is banned in China, but accessible for Internet users with more sophisticated equipment.
Li Fei, a senior member of the legislature, said on Friday that there was no need to worry that the new rules could hinder citizen exposure of wrongdoing, Xinhua reported.
"Identity management work can be conducted backstage, allowing users to use different names when posting material publicly," Xinhua further quoted him as saying earlier this week.
Previously, only microblog users in five cities -- the capital Beijing, the commercial hub of Shanghai, the northern port city of Tianjin and the southern cities of Guangzhou and Shenzhen -- were required to provide their real names under a trial that started a year ago.
In the past, users had been able to set up microblog accounts under assumed names, making it more difficult for authorities to track them down, and allowing them to set up new accounts if existing ones were shut down.
It was not immediately clear if users would be able to find ways to skirt the requirement, though according to Xinhua, the trend has been towards registration.
It said that by last month, nearly all fixed-line users and 70 percent of mobile users had registered with their own names, citing figures from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.
The ministry, which regulates the online sector in China, said in June that the then-proposed legal changes were needed to protect state security.Xinhua, in a separate commentary on Friday, said the new rules are meant to defend the legal rights of Internet users "and will help, rather than harm, the country's netizens" by, for example, protecting their privacy.
-AFP/ac
BEIJING: China has approved new rules that require Internet users nationwide to provide real-name identification, state media reported on Friday, as the government increases its already tight online grip.
The National People's Congress (NPC), the country's legislature, adopted the measures at a meeting on Friday, the official Xinhua news agency and other media said.
According to Xinhua, the decision, which came at the end of a five-day session of the NPC Standing Committee, requires Internet users to offer their names as identification to telecommunication service providers when seeking access to their services.
"Network service providers will ask users to provide genuine identification information when signing agreements to grant them access to the Internet, fixed-line telephone or mobile telecommunication services or to allow users to post information publicly," Xinhua said, quoting the decision.
Popular microblogging sites similar to Twitter have been used in China to air grievances and even to reveal wrongdoing by officials, and such muckraking is tolerated when it dovetails with the government's own desire to rein in corruption.
But with more than half a billion Chinese now online, authorities are concerned about the power of the Internet to influence public opinion in a country that maintains tight controls on its traditional media outlets.
Beijing already regularly blocks Internet searches under a vast online censorship system known as the Great Firewall of China, but the growing popularity of microblogs, known as "weibos", has posed a new challenge.
The firewall has been built up over time since the Internet began to develop in China, and uses a range of technologies to block access to particular sites' IP addresses from Chinese computers.
Censors also keep watch on the weibos that have been used to organise protests and challenge official accounts of events such as a deadly 2011 rail crash that sparked fierce criticism of the government.
Dissident artist and fierce government critic Ai Weiwei on Friday criticised efforts to hinder Internet discourse.
"Blocking the Internet, an action that will limit the exchange of information, is an uncivilised and inhumane crime," he said on Twitter, which is banned in China, but accessible for Internet users with more sophisticated equipment.
Li Fei, a senior member of the legislature, said on Friday that there was no need to worry that the new rules could hinder citizen exposure of wrongdoing, Xinhua reported.
"Identity management work can be conducted backstage, allowing users to use different names when posting material publicly," Xinhua further quoted him as saying earlier this week.
Previously, only microblog users in five cities -- the capital Beijing, the commercial hub of Shanghai, the northern port city of Tianjin and the southern cities of Guangzhou and Shenzhen -- were required to provide their real names under a trial that started a year ago.
In the past, users had been able to set up microblog accounts under assumed names, making it more difficult for authorities to track them down, and allowing them to set up new accounts if existing ones were shut down.
It was not immediately clear if users would be able to find ways to skirt the requirement, though according to Xinhua, the trend has been towards registration.
It said that by last month, nearly all fixed-line users and 70 percent of mobile users had registered with their own names, citing figures from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.
The ministry, which regulates the online sector in China, said in June that the then-proposed legal changes were needed to protect state security.Xinhua, in a separate commentary on Friday, said the new rules are meant to defend the legal rights of Internet users "and will help, rather than harm, the country's netizens" by, for example, protecting their privacy.
-AFP/ac
Thursday, December 27, 2012
China Starts Longest Bullet-Train Line, Luring Air Travelers - Bloomberg
China Starts Longest Bullet-Train Line, Luring Air Travelers - Bloomberg:
China started its 2,298-kilometer (1,428-mile) high-speed train line, the longest in the world, as the nation boosts investment in rail networks, intensifying competition for airlines.
The first train on the Beijing-Guangzhou line left Beijing West Station at 9 a.m. as scheduled, according to state broadcaster China Central Television. The trains will initially run at a speed of 300 kilometers per hour, reducing the travel time to as few as eight hours from the previous 21 hours, according to the rail ministry.
The new line, which will eventually connect to Hong Kong, is part of the nation’s plan to build a 16,000-kilometer high- speed rail network by 2015, undeterred by a deadly bullet-train accident last year. The new service may lure air travelers and prompt China Southern Airlines Co. (1055) and Air China Ltd. (601111) to cut fares, according to Barclays Plc.
“The continued development of the high-speed train network will marginalize short-haul domestic air routes,” Barclays analysts Patrick Xu and Jon Windham wrote in a note to clients last week. It will “exacerbate the competition on long-haul domestic routes and depress margins.”
China has increased spending on rail projects this year as the government sought to revive growth in the world’s second- biggest economy. The National Development and Reform Commission, the nation’s top economic planner, earlier this month approved a 63.7 billion-yuan ($10 billion) subway construction plan in Changsha city, Hunan province.
Train Crash
In September, the agency approved subway projects in 18 cities, inter-city rail projects and road construction plans. Rail construction had slowed last year after 40 people were killed in a bullet-train crash near the eastern city of Wenzhou.
“China’s central government invested a lot this year in rail to revive economic growth,” said James Chung, a Shanghai- based analyst at Masterlink Securities Corp. (2856) “Fixed-asset investment can boost growth quickly.”
The line linking capital Beijing with Pearl River Delta’s Guangzhou goes through five provinces from the north to the south. It also connects to the existing high-speed rail lines including Beijing-Shanghai and Guangzhou-Shenzhen, according to the Ministry of Railways.
The fastest bullet-train on the new line has ticket prices starting from 865 yuan ($139), about 73 percent of the lowest air fare on the route, Barclays said Dec. 21.
Discount Offers
For Dec. 26 flights between Beijing and Wuhan, a key destination on the line, China Southern offered a discount of as much as 53 percent, according to Ctrip.com, the country’s biggest travel portal. Air China gave a 50 percent discount on that day, the website showed Dec. 24.
The Beijing-Guangzhou line will also step up competition for China Southern’s Airbus SAS A380 superjumbo services between the cities, an about three-hour flight. High-speed train services in China have lured travelers from flights that often suffer delays because of airspace restrictions and poor weather.
The nation’s carriers flew 267.5 million passengers in the first ten months of 2012, 9 percent more than a year earlier, according to data by the aviation regulator. Nationwide rail passengers rose 4.6 percent to 1.7 billion through November, according to the rail ministry. It didn’t provide passenger numbers for high-speed railways.
In Hong Kong, about 8,000 workers are engaged in the construction of a HK$66.9 billion ($8.6 billion) 26-kilometer underground railway, which will run from downtown Hong Kong to the Chinese border and connect to the Beijing-Guangzhou line, builder MTR Corp (66) said.
Kowloon Terminus
Piling of the underground West Kowloon Terminus has been completed. Excavation and tunneling works are in progress, MTR, the city’s subway operator, said in an e-mailed statement. The Hong Kong section of the express rail link, expected to be completed in 2015, may carry about 99,000 passengers a day in 2016, it said.
The 11-hectare terminus, which will have customs and immigration facilities, is located next to the city’s tallest building International Commerce Centre. It is also in the vicinity of the planned West Kowloon Cultural District, an airport express station and a subway station.
Regional Hub
The link “will facilitate the social and economic integration of Hong Kong with cities in the Pearl River Delta as well as other major cities in the mainland,” MTR said. It “will enhance Hong Kong’s position as a regional hub.”
China’s Ministry of Railways didn’t publish a total investment amount for the new high-speed line because it was developed in parts and then connected. The Wuhan-Guangzhou section, which extends 1,069 kilometers and began operating a year ago, cost 116.6 billion yuan.
Another landmark Chinese high-speed railway, the 1,318- kilometer Beijing to Shanghai link that started operating in June 2011, cost 220.9 billion yuan.
The ministry said the Beijing-Guangzhou line is “one of the most sophisticated high-speed railways” in the country. Disaster prevention and monitoring systems have been strengthened and a risk control system has been set up to ensure the network’s safety, it said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Jasmine Wang in Hong Kong at jwang513@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Vipin V. Nair at vnair12@bloomberg.net
China started its 2,298-kilometer (1,428-mile) high-speed train line, the longest in the world, as the nation boosts investment in rail networks, intensifying competition for airlines.
The first train on the Beijing-Guangzhou line left Beijing West Station at 9 a.m. as scheduled, according to state broadcaster China Central Television. The trains will initially run at a speed of 300 kilometers per hour, reducing the travel time to as few as eight hours from the previous 21 hours, according to the rail ministry.
The new line, which will eventually connect to Hong Kong, is part of the nation’s plan to build a 16,000-kilometer high- speed rail network by 2015, undeterred by a deadly bullet-train accident last year. The new service may lure air travelers and prompt China Southern Airlines Co. (1055) and Air China Ltd. (601111) to cut fares, according to Barclays Plc.
“The continued development of the high-speed train network will marginalize short-haul domestic air routes,” Barclays analysts Patrick Xu and Jon Windham wrote in a note to clients last week. It will “exacerbate the competition on long-haul domestic routes and depress margins.”
China has increased spending on rail projects this year as the government sought to revive growth in the world’s second- biggest economy. The National Development and Reform Commission, the nation’s top economic planner, earlier this month approved a 63.7 billion-yuan ($10 billion) subway construction plan in Changsha city, Hunan province.
Train Crash
In September, the agency approved subway projects in 18 cities, inter-city rail projects and road construction plans. Rail construction had slowed last year after 40 people were killed in a bullet-train crash near the eastern city of Wenzhou.
“China’s central government invested a lot this year in rail to revive economic growth,” said James Chung, a Shanghai- based analyst at Masterlink Securities Corp. (2856) “Fixed-asset investment can boost growth quickly.”
The line linking capital Beijing with Pearl River Delta’s Guangzhou goes through five provinces from the north to the south. It also connects to the existing high-speed rail lines including Beijing-Shanghai and Guangzhou-Shenzhen, according to the Ministry of Railways.
The fastest bullet-train on the new line has ticket prices starting from 865 yuan ($139), about 73 percent of the lowest air fare on the route, Barclays said Dec. 21.
Discount Offers
For Dec. 26 flights between Beijing and Wuhan, a key destination on the line, China Southern offered a discount of as much as 53 percent, according to Ctrip.com, the country’s biggest travel portal. Air China gave a 50 percent discount on that day, the website showed Dec. 24.
The Beijing-Guangzhou line will also step up competition for China Southern’s Airbus SAS A380 superjumbo services between the cities, an about three-hour flight. High-speed train services in China have lured travelers from flights that often suffer delays because of airspace restrictions and poor weather.
The nation’s carriers flew 267.5 million passengers in the first ten months of 2012, 9 percent more than a year earlier, according to data by the aviation regulator. Nationwide rail passengers rose 4.6 percent to 1.7 billion through November, according to the rail ministry. It didn’t provide passenger numbers for high-speed railways.
In Hong Kong, about 8,000 workers are engaged in the construction of a HK$66.9 billion ($8.6 billion) 26-kilometer underground railway, which will run from downtown Hong Kong to the Chinese border and connect to the Beijing-Guangzhou line, builder MTR Corp (66) said.
Kowloon Terminus
Piling of the underground West Kowloon Terminus has been completed. Excavation and tunneling works are in progress, MTR, the city’s subway operator, said in an e-mailed statement. The Hong Kong section of the express rail link, expected to be completed in 2015, may carry about 99,000 passengers a day in 2016, it said.
The 11-hectare terminus, which will have customs and immigration facilities, is located next to the city’s tallest building International Commerce Centre. It is also in the vicinity of the planned West Kowloon Cultural District, an airport express station and a subway station.
Regional Hub
The link “will facilitate the social and economic integration of Hong Kong with cities in the Pearl River Delta as well as other major cities in the mainland,” MTR said. It “will enhance Hong Kong’s position as a regional hub.”
China’s Ministry of Railways didn’t publish a total investment amount for the new high-speed line because it was developed in parts and then connected. The Wuhan-Guangzhou section, which extends 1,069 kilometers and began operating a year ago, cost 116.6 billion yuan.
Another landmark Chinese high-speed railway, the 1,318- kilometer Beijing to Shanghai link that started operating in June 2011, cost 220.9 billion yuan.
The ministry said the Beijing-Guangzhou line is “one of the most sophisticated high-speed railways” in the country. Disaster prevention and monitoring systems have been strengthened and a risk control system has been set up to ensure the network’s safety, it said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Jasmine Wang in Hong Kong at jwang513@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Vipin V. Nair at vnair12@bloomberg.net
China Begins Longest Bullet Train Service - NYTimes.com
China Begins Longest Bullet Train Service - NYTimes.com:
By KEITH BRADSHER
Published: December 26, 2012
HONG KONG — China began service Wednesday morning on the world’s longest high-speed rail line, covering a distance in eight hours that is about equal to that from New York to Key West, Fla., or from London across Europe to Belgrade, Serbia.
Trains traveling 300 kilometers, or 186 miles, an hour, began regular service between Beijing and Guangzhou, the main metropolis in southeastern China. Older trains still in service on a parallel rail line take 21 hours; Amtrak trains from New York to Miami, a shorter distance, still take nearly 30 hours.
Completion of the Beijing-Guangzhou route — roughly 1,200 miles — is the latest sign that China has resumed rapid construction on one of the world’s largest and most ambitious infrastructure projects, a network of four north-south routes and four east-west routes that span the country.
Lavish spending on the project has helped jump-start the Chinese economy twice: in 2009, during the global financial crisis, and again this autumn, after a brief but sharp economic slowdown over the summer.
The hiring of as many as 100,000 workers for each line has kept a lid on unemployment as private-sector construction has slowed because of limits on real estate speculation. The national network has helped to reduce air pollution in Chinese cities and helped to curb demand for imported diesel fuel by freeing capacity on older rail lines for goods to be carried by freight trains instead of heavily polluting, costlier trucks.
But the high-speed rail system has also been controversial in China. Debt to finance the construction has reached nearly 4 trillion renminbi, or $640 billion, making it one of the most visible reasons total debt has been surging as a share of economic output in China, and is approaching levels in the West.
Each passenger car taken off the older, slower rail lines makes room for three freight cars because passenger trains have to move so quickly that they force freight trains to stop frequently. But although the high-speed trains have played a big role in allowing sharp increases in freight shipments, the Ministry of Railways has not yet figured out a way to charge large freight shippers, many of them politically influential state-owned enterprises, for part of the cost of the high-speed lines, which haul only passengers.
The high-speed trains are also considerably more expensive than the heavily subsidized older passenger trains. A second-class seat on the new bullet trains from Beijing to Guangzhou costs 865 renminbi ($139) one way, compared with 426 renminbi ($68) for the cheapest bunk on one of the older trains, which also have narrow, uncomfortable seats for as little as 251 renminbi ($40).
Worries about the high-speed network peaked in July 2011, when one high-speed train plowed into the back of another near Wenzhou in southeastern China, killing 40 people.
A subsequent investigation blamed flawed signaling equipment for the crash. China had been operating high-speed trains at 350 kilometers an hour (about 218 m.ph.), and it cut the top speed to the current rate in response to that crash.
The crash crystallized worries about the haste with which China has built its high-speed rail system. The first line, from Beijing to Tianjin, opened a week before the 2008 Olympics; a little more than four years later, the country now has 9,349 kilometers, or 5,809 miles, of high-speed lines.
China’s aviation system has a good international reputation for safety, and its occasional deadly crashes have not attracted nearly as much attention. Transportation safety experts attribute the public’s fascination with the Wenzhou crash partly to the novelty of the system and partly to a distrust among many Chinese of what is perceived as a homegrown technology, in contrast with the Boeing and Airbus jets flown by Chinese airlines.
Japanese rail executives have complained, however, that the Chinese technology is mostly copied from them, an accusation that Chinese rail executives have strenuously denied.
The main alternative to trains for most Chinese lies in the country’s roads, which have a grim reputation by international standards. Periodic crashes of intercity buses kill dozens of people at a time, while crashes of private cars are frequent in a country where four-fifths of new cars are sold to first-time buyers, often with scant driving experience.
Flights between Beijing and Guangzhou take about three hours and 15 minutes. But air travelers in China need to arrive at least an hour before a flight, compared with 20 minutes for high-speed trains, and the airports tend to be farther from the centers of cities than the high-speed train stations.
Land acquisition is the toughest part of building high-speed rail lines in the West, because the tracks need to be almost perfectly straight, and it has been an issue in China as well. Although local and provincial governments have forced owners to sell land for the tracks themselves, there have been disputes over suddenly valuable land near rail stations, with the result that surprisingly few stores and other commercial venues have sprung up around some high-speed stations used by tens of thousands of travelers every day.
Zhao Xiangfeng, a farmer in Henan Province, said a plan to build a mini-mall on his and six other farmers’ land near a station had been shelved indefinitely after he and three of the other farmers refused to lease the land for any price close to what the village leadership offered. He said he worried that local leaders might try stronger tactics on the farmers to force them to lease the land and revive the project.
The 664-mile southern segment of the new high-speed rail line, from Guangzhou as far as Wuhan, has been open for nearly three years. The trains, which come every four to 12 minutes, are often packed, which could limit the number of seats available for travel to Beijing.
Mia Li in Beijing contributed research.
A version of this article appeared in print on December 27, 2012, on page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: On Longest Bullet Train Line, Chinese Ride 1,200 Miles in 8 Hours.
By KEITH BRADSHER
Published: December 26, 2012
HONG KONG — China began service Wednesday morning on the world’s longest high-speed rail line, covering a distance in eight hours that is about equal to that from New York to Key West, Fla., or from London across Europe to Belgrade, Serbia.
Trains traveling 300 kilometers, or 186 miles, an hour, began regular service between Beijing and Guangzhou, the main metropolis in southeastern China. Older trains still in service on a parallel rail line take 21 hours; Amtrak trains from New York to Miami, a shorter distance, still take nearly 30 hours.
Completion of the Beijing-Guangzhou route — roughly 1,200 miles — is the latest sign that China has resumed rapid construction on one of the world’s largest and most ambitious infrastructure projects, a network of four north-south routes and four east-west routes that span the country.
Lavish spending on the project has helped jump-start the Chinese economy twice: in 2009, during the global financial crisis, and again this autumn, after a brief but sharp economic slowdown over the summer.
The hiring of as many as 100,000 workers for each line has kept a lid on unemployment as private-sector construction has slowed because of limits on real estate speculation. The national network has helped to reduce air pollution in Chinese cities and helped to curb demand for imported diesel fuel by freeing capacity on older rail lines for goods to be carried by freight trains instead of heavily polluting, costlier trucks.
But the high-speed rail system has also been controversial in China. Debt to finance the construction has reached nearly 4 trillion renminbi, or $640 billion, making it one of the most visible reasons total debt has been surging as a share of economic output in China, and is approaching levels in the West.
Each passenger car taken off the older, slower rail lines makes room for three freight cars because passenger trains have to move so quickly that they force freight trains to stop frequently. But although the high-speed trains have played a big role in allowing sharp increases in freight shipments, the Ministry of Railways has not yet figured out a way to charge large freight shippers, many of them politically influential state-owned enterprises, for part of the cost of the high-speed lines, which haul only passengers.
The high-speed trains are also considerably more expensive than the heavily subsidized older passenger trains. A second-class seat on the new bullet trains from Beijing to Guangzhou costs 865 renminbi ($139) one way, compared with 426 renminbi ($68) for the cheapest bunk on one of the older trains, which also have narrow, uncomfortable seats for as little as 251 renminbi ($40).
Worries about the high-speed network peaked in July 2011, when one high-speed train plowed into the back of another near Wenzhou in southeastern China, killing 40 people.
A subsequent investigation blamed flawed signaling equipment for the crash. China had been operating high-speed trains at 350 kilometers an hour (about 218 m.ph.), and it cut the top speed to the current rate in response to that crash.
The crash crystallized worries about the haste with which China has built its high-speed rail system. The first line, from Beijing to Tianjin, opened a week before the 2008 Olympics; a little more than four years later, the country now has 9,349 kilometers, or 5,809 miles, of high-speed lines.
China’s aviation system has a good international reputation for safety, and its occasional deadly crashes have not attracted nearly as much attention. Transportation safety experts attribute the public’s fascination with the Wenzhou crash partly to the novelty of the system and partly to a distrust among many Chinese of what is perceived as a homegrown technology, in contrast with the Boeing and Airbus jets flown by Chinese airlines.
Japanese rail executives have complained, however, that the Chinese technology is mostly copied from them, an accusation that Chinese rail executives have strenuously denied.
The main alternative to trains for most Chinese lies in the country’s roads, which have a grim reputation by international standards. Periodic crashes of intercity buses kill dozens of people at a time, while crashes of private cars are frequent in a country where four-fifths of new cars are sold to first-time buyers, often with scant driving experience.
Flights between Beijing and Guangzhou take about three hours and 15 minutes. But air travelers in China need to arrive at least an hour before a flight, compared with 20 minutes for high-speed trains, and the airports tend to be farther from the centers of cities than the high-speed train stations.
Land acquisition is the toughest part of building high-speed rail lines in the West, because the tracks need to be almost perfectly straight, and it has been an issue in China as well. Although local and provincial governments have forced owners to sell land for the tracks themselves, there have been disputes over suddenly valuable land near rail stations, with the result that surprisingly few stores and other commercial venues have sprung up around some high-speed stations used by tens of thousands of travelers every day.
Zhao Xiangfeng, a farmer in Henan Province, said a plan to build a mini-mall on his and six other farmers’ land near a station had been shelved indefinitely after he and three of the other farmers refused to lease the land for any price close to what the village leadership offered. He said he worried that local leaders might try stronger tactics on the farmers to force them to lease the land and revive the project.
The 664-mile southern segment of the new high-speed rail line, from Guangzhou as far as Wuhan, has been open for nearly three years. The trains, which come every four to 12 minutes, are often packed, which could limit the number of seats available for travel to Beijing.
Mia Li in Beijing contributed research.
A version of this article appeared in print on December 27, 2012, on page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: On Longest Bullet Train Line, Chinese Ride 1,200 Miles in 8 Hours.
Saturday, December 22, 2012
China to open world's longest high-speed rail line
China to open world's longest high-speed rail line:
BEIJING (REUTERS) - China will open the world's longest high-speed rail line next week when a link between Beijing and the southern metropolis of Guangzhou is inaugurated, officials said on Saturday, underscoring its commitment to a trouble-plagued transport scheme.
The 2,298-km line, parts of which are already in operation, will begin full service on Wednesday, halving travel time to less than 10 hours on trains which will run at 300 kph.
The new route offers a chance for China's railways ministry, which has been dogged by scandals and missteps, to redeem itself.
A July crash last year of a high-speed train killed 40 people and raised concerns about the safety of the fast-growing network and threatened plans to export high-speed technology.
BEIJING (REUTERS) - China will open the world's longest high-speed rail line next week when a link between Beijing and the southern metropolis of Guangzhou is inaugurated, officials said on Saturday, underscoring its commitment to a trouble-plagued transport scheme.
The 2,298-km line, parts of which are already in operation, will begin full service on Wednesday, halving travel time to less than 10 hours on trains which will run at 300 kph.
The new route offers a chance for China's railways ministry, which has been dogged by scandals and missteps, to redeem itself.
A July crash last year of a high-speed train killed 40 people and raised concerns about the safety of the fast-growing network and threatened plans to export high-speed technology.
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