Rail renaissance

Fuxing high speed trains restore confi dence in Chinese tech at home and abroad

Among all the 254 key standards used in the new Fuxing bullet train, 84 percent are Chinese.

The debut of next- generation Fuxing bullet trains symbolizes that the shadow cast by the fatal 2011 Wenzhou crash has been dispelled.

The new trains, which were totally domestically developed, also mark a milestone in the country’s high speed rail exports and its companies’ competiveness with the West.

However political challenges still pose road blocks to Chinese technology being exported abroad.

Passengers on the brand- new highspeed Fuxing train – whose name literally means renaissance – which has started running between Beijing and Shanghai took to social media to rave about their experience.

The Fuxings are the latest “China Standard” bullet trains, completely designed and manufactured in China, capable of running at 400 kilometers per hour.

But their speed is capped at a mere 300 kilometers, as is the speed of the older trains on the line, which has disappointed many.

These restrictions were implemented after the 2011 Wenzhou bullet train crash killed 40 and injured around 200, following a nationwide chorus of safety concerns.

Several political advisers have proposed increasing the speeds in recent years, but in vain. However some believe that the caps may be lifted for the Fuxings.

“I’m sure the Beijing- Shanghai highspeed rail line speed limit will be raised to 350 kilometers soon,” Sun Zhang, a railway expert and professor at Shanghai’s Tongji University, told the Global Times. “The Fuxing series will gradually replace the Hexie ( harmony) bullet trains when they retire after an around 30- year life span.”

However, the major signifi cance of the Fuxings lies not in their speed, but in their standardization, Sun noted.

Ji Jialun, professor at the School of Traffi c and Transportation, Beijing Jiaotong University, echoed Sun’s opinion, saying the totally- homegrown Fuxing will mark a milestone in the export of Chinese high- speed rail ( HSR) technology

“It’s a landmark of the change from mix- blood to pureblood, and it will be no longer controversial for China to export our technology,” Ji commented to the Global Times.

Blow to development

China fi rst got HSR on April 18, 2007 when the country started running Hexie trains – based on Japanese, German and French technology – on upgraded rail lines at up to 250 kilometers per hour.

Based on technologies purchased and absorbed from foreign countries, China rapidly expanded its HSR network and was soon competing for projects abroad.

However, the fatal Wenzhou crash put a sudden brake on progress. The incident, caused by a signal failure after a lightning strike, ignited a backlash against HSR. Investment and expansion across the country was virtually suspended.

“Construction of many railways was aff ected. Some projects were interrupted due to a lack of funds, some were postponed. The government also stopped approving new projects. The situation lasted about two years,” recalled Li Bo, an employee of a survey and design institute affi liated with the China Railway Construction Corporation in Wuhan, Central China’s Hubei Province.

“Our workloads dropped sharply. There was only one survey and design project for a coal- fi red railway in the whole year,” Li told the Global Times.

China’s eff orts to build railways abroad were also aff ected.

“I don’t rule out the idea that some Western rivals magnifi ed the incident, fanned the fl ames and smeared Chinese technologies,” Mei Xinyu, an associate researcher at the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation, told the Global Times.

National pride again

The change in China’s top leadership in 2012 turned the tide. The new leaders supported HSR at home and promoted it overseas.

In July 2015, Chinese President Xi Jinping inspected Changchun Railway Vehicles Co., Ltd, a subsidiary of China’s biggest train- maker the CRRC Corporation Limited ( CRRC), and remarked that high speed trains are a “name card” for China. Chinese Premier Li Keqiang has even been nicknamed “the salesman of Chinese HSR” for his continual promotion eff orts at international events and on visits abroad.

Under the slogan of “bringing in advanced technology and creating China’s brand,” researchers and developers have created the Fuxing, also known as the China standard electricity multiple unit ( EMU).

Among all the 254 key standards used in the train, 84 percent are Chinese. Its core technologies, including its power supply, operation management and security monitoring, are all homegrown.

“The standardization will greatly facilitate the production and maintenance of high- speed trains in China,” Sun said.

This marks a shift from the Hexie series, which used a variety of diff erent standards in diff erent trains under the Hexie name as the technologies used in their construction were borrowed from diff erent countries.

Besides their attractive appearance, the stability, noise control, energy effi ciency and traction power of the Fuxing series are all superior to their predecessors, according to the People’s Railway Daily.

The introduction of the Fuxings has also smoothed the road for China to export its HSR technologies and greatly enhanced Chinese discourse power, Ji noted.

“In our previous HSR projects overseas, such as the railway we built in Turkey, we had to use European standards and had little discourse power,” Ji said. An HSR line linking Turkey’s capital Ankara and its most populous city of Istanbul, built jointly by a Chinese- Turkish consortium, was completed in 2014.

In the past, patent and safety issues had always been negotiation problems when Chinese groups vied for HSR projects with other major players in the sector.

However the patent issue will no longer be a sticking point as the Fuxing series is more or less totally homegrown.

“We have invited top US law fi rms to make an intellectual property assessment of our standard EMU trains, which concluded that our technology will have