[转帖] [2011.2.3] High-speed rail in China中国高铁

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http://www.ecocn.org/thread-45236-1-1.html
High-speed rail in China
中国高铁
On the wrong track?
走错了轨道？
Feb 3rd 2011, 16:12 by M.A. | BEIJING

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JUDGING from the votes they have cast with their bottoms, China's business travellers need little persuading of the merits of high-speed rail. Since the high-speed link between Wuhan and Guangzhou opened in December 2009, for instance, over 20m have chosen the zippier trains, while the number of competing daily flights between Guangzhou and Changsha (on the route to Wuhan) has dropped from over 11 to three. Yet whether plans to double high-speed coverage by 2020 are an unmitigated good thing for China, which already has more high-speed rail than any other country, is a different question.
从中国商务乘客的上座比率来看，他们根本不需要高铁益处良多的宣传。举例来讲，武广高铁2009年12月开通以来，已经运送了超过2千万乘客。在与其竞争的航空业，广州至长沙（在武广高铁线上）的日航班数则从先前超过11个降至目前3个。然而，2020年之前将高铁里程翻倍的计划是否绝对有益，这就另作考虑了。毕竟，中国目前已经是世界上高铁运营里程最长的国家。

It is one that decision-makers have largely sidestepped thanks to the peculiarities of China's political system. But of late debate has spilled over into the public realm. Detractors complain that high-speed rail is too expensive for the Zhang in the street. Migrant labourers, 230m of whom are expected to make the journey home during Spring Festival, are not in enough of a hurry to pay a premium for speed, they argue. (Or as Patrick Chovanec of Tsinghua University puts it with a dose of economese, "The bulk of the long-distance passenger traffic, especially during the peak holiday periods, is migrant workers for whom the opportunity cost of time is relatively low.") While some travellers are having such a hard time getting tickets home this holiday season that they have unveiled their underpants in protest, it is reported that on one line $352 luxury sleeper tickets are going begging.
由于政治制度的特殊性，中国的决策者在这一问题上大多选择避而不语。但是，最近有关高铁扩建的讨论已经延伸至公众领域。批评者称，高铁对于街头大众来讲过于昂贵。他们认为，预计有2.3亿农民工会在春节期间返乡，他们并不愿因赶时间而多支付些费用。（清华大学经济及管理学院程致宇教授也曾用一串经济术语作如下解释，“长途旅客的主力军是农民工，这在客运高峰的节假日表现尤为明显。对他们而言，时间的机会成本相对较低。”）对于有些旅客，春节回家实在一票难求，甚至有人脱衣抗议。同时，却有报道称352美元的豪华卧铺火车票无人问津。

This mismatch raises questions about the $300 billion being thrown at high-speed rail this decade. Many newly added lines are making hefty losses and many are thought to be operating at under half capacity The Chinese Academy of Sciences, an influential official think-tank, seems to be in the sceptics' corner: fretting about unsustainable levels of debt, it was reported in November to have recommended the government reconsider its plans. Chinese leaders were said to have ordered a review, and construction of a Maglev line between Shanghai and Hangzhou has since been reported "shelved".
这种供求不均衡让人不禁怀疑十年间在高铁上3千亿美元的投入是否合理。很多新增线路都严重亏损，上座率不足50%。作为著名的官方智库，中国社会科学院似乎也持怀疑态度：据报道，该机构担心高铁项目债务过高，曾在去年11月向政府建议重新考虑其计划。据称，中国领导人已经下令重新审视此类规划，沪杭磁悬浮项目也自那之后“暂停”。

Some economists make even more dismal arguments. Mr Chovanec attacks one of the main legs of the economic case for high-speed rail in China, that transporting passengers thus would free up track desperately needed for shifting coal. Much of China's fuel travels by road: a 62-mile traffic jam outside Beijing lasting 10 days last August was only the most visible sign. But if fast trains are out of reach for the masses, there will be little or no relief for either rail or road networks. Critics say the proliferation of expensive trains has pushed poorer travellers back onto the roads, clogging them with 70,000 more buses this Spring Festival, although hundreds of extra trains have also been laid on. Improving China's languishing logistics network for freight would be a better use of the cash, Mr Chovanec posits.
一些经济学家的观点更加悲观。中国修建高铁的一个重要经济考虑是运送旅客，以便腾出更多轨道，缓解极为紧张的煤炭运输。程致宇先生对此极不赞同。公路承担了中国大量能源运输：去年8月，北京城外的高速路上车辆绵延长达62英里，交通阻塞达10天之久，这是最好的例证之一。然而，如果公众不搭乘高铁，其减缓铁路公路运输系统压力的作用就很小了，或者根本没有作用。批评者称春节期间尽管有数百次临时列车增开，但频繁而又昂贵的高铁迫使不那么富裕的乘客又不得不选择公路交通，使得节日期间公路上新增7万辆客车。程致宇认为，将资金用于改善中国糟糕的货运物流网络将会是更好的选择。

Yet it would be premature to assume that China will not hit or even exceed its stratospheric targets. The Shanghai-Hangzhou Maglev was reported "shelved" in 2007, too, so its difficulties are not new; compounding them, there is now a separate high-speed (though slightly slower) connection between the two cities. China's mandarins are clearly not insusceptible to economic sense, and individual projects could bite the dust. But Chinese Communist Party leaders' economic priorities are defined by a different kind of cost-benefit analysis than that familiar to politicians in capitalist democracies.
即便如此，现在就认定中国在高铁扩建方面将不会达到或超过预期高目标还为时尚早。据称，2007年沪杭磁悬浮项目也曾宣布“暂停”，可见这其中的种种挑战由来已久；如今，连接这两座城市的是另外一条独立的高速线（尽管比磁悬浮稍慢）。显然，中国的政府高官并非没有经济头脑，个别项目也会无果而终。然而，中国共产党领导人眼中的经济重点是建立在一种特别的效益分析之上，而这种分析与资本主义国家政客们所熟悉的截然不同。

What if some investments in whizzy rolling stock are loss-making? Famously unconstrained by electoral time horizons, they may be counting on demand for high-speed rail travel to rise with their citizens' wealth. And, as in industries like telecoms before, China's national railway-equipment champions will use the revenues drawn from the world's biggest market—where they are making decent profits—to support their move into overseas markets. It is a move already visible in recent export deals with the US.
如果在这些高科技高速列车上的投资出现亏损怎么办？中国政府官员不受竞选周期的影响，这一点世人皆知。他们或许还期望人们对高铁的需求会随国民财富的增加而增强。况且，和以前的电信行业一样，中国的铁路设备供应商巨头们还会借助在这个世界上最大的消费市场上获得的可观利润，支持其海外扩张计划。这一点已经在他们最近对美国的出口贸易中有所体现。

Then there are the political payoffs. Even uneconomic construction work creates employment, enhancing social stability at a time when the global economy remains fragile. High-speed locomotives look jazzy, and offer yet more glittering evidence of the Communist party's modernisation of China. And the promise of placing China at the heart of a Eurasian rail network, as officials hope to do, hurts neither China's prestige, nor its ruling party's. Any trouble down the tracks would have to look pretty dire to derail all that.
此外，这也有利于政局稳定。即便是亏损的工程也能创造就业机会，进而促进全球经济脆弱时期的中国社会稳定。高速列车引人注意，还能为中国共产党的促进中国现代化增光添彩。除此之外，中国的政府高官们希望把中国建成亚欧铁路的中心，这一决心既不会损害中国又不会执政党的光辉形象。如果轨道上出了什么问题， 以至于高速列车停开，这个问题一定要相当巨大才行。