China’s Bullet Train Fiasco: A Warning to America

David Kreutzer / April 27, 2011

Well, the Chinese finally have a green-energy idea worth stealing: arrest government officials who foist overpriced, underperforming, debt-ballooning, money-losing projects on taxpayers.

Earlier this year, Liu Zhijun, Minister of Railways in the People’s Republic of China, was arrested following investigations into cost overruns and poor performance of the ministry’s showcase bullet trains. To be fair, the arrests were made when the investigations uncovered potential corruption in addition to the mismanagement. But the corruption problems likely would have gone unnoticed had the bullet train program not become such a boondoggle. (The railway debt alone is about 5 percent of China’s GDP.)

According to Charles Lane of The Washington Post, the bullet-train fiasco was not stopped earlier because “Liu exploited the communist leadership’s fascination with bigness and national prestige.” (more…)