Chinese Milestone

With the inauguration of the world’s fastest train link between the modern cities of Guangzhou and Wuhan at an incredible average speed of 350 km per hour, China has proved to the world the kind of technology marvel it is capable of producing. The super-high-speed train reduces the 1,069-km journey to a three-hour thrilling ride and cuts the previous journey by more than seven-and-a-half hours. The train can go up to 394 km per hour, thus becoming the fastest train in operation in the world. What is amazing is that the project has been completed in just four years — an impossibility by Indian standard. It forms part of China’s ambitious plan to expand its high-speed rail network. Its target is to increase the national rail network from the current 86,000 km to 120,000 km. Once the goal is accomplished, China’s will be the most extensive rail network next only to the United States. Beijing’s other rail target is to build as many as 42 high-speed lines in the next two years. That leaves India way behind in terms of rail infrastructure (given also the fact that we do not have any high-speed train at all), just as China has outwitted India in so many other technology areas. If there is anything that India should — and must — learn from China, it is that country’s professionalism. But perhaps ‘democracy’ is India’s deterrent, for authoritarian China can compel its citizens to slog for hours together without a murmur of protest. THE SENTINEL