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Sunday, 13 February 2011
Mainland railway and air transport sectors undergo hi-tech revolution
On land and in the skies, the mainland is in the grips of an unprecedented transport revolution that has potentially far-reaching economic ramifications.
Mainland railway and air transport sectors undergo hi-tech revolution
Will Clem in Shanghai 11 February 2011
On land and in the skies, the mainland is in the grips of an unprecedented transport revolution that has potentially far-reaching economic ramifications.
From Qiqihar in the far northeast to Dali in Yunnan province, from Urumqi in Xinjiang to Shenzhen, the entire nation will soon be interlinked with a vast network of high-speed trains.
In a hangar on the outskirts of Shanghai, engineers are furiously working to build the mainland’s newest and in many respects the first domestically designed-and-built large commercial jet, which state leaders hope may one day be able to compete on an even footing with aviation giants such as Boeing and Airbus.
The seemingly unconnected transport projects are two prongs of a strategy central to the 12th five-year plan to 2015.
The development of both high-speed rail and aerospace engineering is crucial to establishing China’s image as a technological innovator rather than simply the world’s factory, a monstrous assembly line crudely producing goods designed and perfected elsewhere.
The central government is determined to push the mainland economy up the quality ladder, away from the mass manufacturing of low-end products towards high-value, high-technology products that provide a far greater return on investment - and these high-profile projects are integral to shifting the international perception of China’s industries in that direction.
Mark Williams, a senior China economist for Capital Economics, said the central government’s aims were rooted in the desire to swiftly improve national living standards, but he questioned the feasibility of the ambitious timeframes.
“The central government wants to be in sectors where productivity increases very rapidly, and that tends to be at the high end,” Williams said. “The risk is whether China really can compete at that high level.”
He warned the strategy seemed to run against the conventional wisdom of emerging markets focusing on their “competitive advantages” of low-cost, low-skill sectors.
“The normal argument is that emerging economies such as China should stick to what they do best, and should steer clear of cutting-edge sectors,” Williams said. “Countries like China don’t tend to have the technical capacities or a workforce that is able to produce efficiently at that level.”
However, he said that China’s size meant the country had more flexibility to force through structural changes and to punch above its position on the developmental curve.
“Although they claim the high-speed rail was indigenously developed, in reality, China was able to get its hands on Japanese technology relatively cheaply by offering access to its huge market,” Williams said.
However, he added that a major shift by China into high-technology sectors that more developed nations tended to view as their own territory could accentuate the already tense issue of trade imbalances.
“America doesn’t make cheap socks,” he said. “Once you go head-to-head with the likes of Boeing, then that’s another matter entirely.
“If China does go down that route, then I think we will see a lot more instances of protectionism occurring.”
The immense drive to expand the high-speed rail network is one of the most ambitious infrastructure projects ever seen and has been compared in scope to the rapid development of a system of interstate highways in the United States in the late 1950s.
The Ministry of Railways aims to have 25,000 kilometres of newly built high-speed track by 2015, according to the ministry’s chief planner Zheng Jian . The project is projected to require annual investment of 700 billion yuan (HK$827.75 billion), totalling 3.5 trillion yuan over the course of the five-year plan.
However, the booming high-speed rail industry is not only a game-changer in terms of transport. It is seen as a potential cash cow on the regional and world stage - particularly after a “domestically developed” high-speed train set a new conventional railway speed record of 416.6km per hour during a test of the Shanghai-Hangzhou line.
At the beginning of last year, the Ministry of Railways signed a deal with the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China to help mainland firms fight for rail contracts on the international market, and there are signs the tactic is bearing fruit.
Mainland manufacturers have been making inroads into the regional market - including deals to build railways in Thailand and Malaysia - and have designs on the global stage.
CSR Corp, the world’s leading manufacturer of electric locomotives, announced in December last year it was launching a joint venture with US conglomerate General Electric to bid for high-speed rail projects in the US.
That deal followed on from then-California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger heaping praise on China’s high-speed rail drive while on a trip to Shanghai in September, during which he expressed interest in using Chinese trains for his state’s proposed high-speed network.
Vice-Premier Li Keqiang was also reported to have held discussions with British Prime Minister David Cameron about Chinese involvement in a future high-speed rail project during an official visit to Britain last month.
Progress on turning the mainland into a giant in the aviation sector has yet to net the same returns, but the country’s aims are no less ambitious.
The Commercial Aircraft Corp of China (Comac) is on the cusp of introducing its 100-seater ARJ21 regional jet - which has been under development since 2002 - into commercial service, and is working on a larger airliner which has been widely touted as “China’s Jumbo”.
In contrast to the ARJ21, which uses two specially developed jet engines manufactured by GE, the larger C919 is to be entirely designed and built in China using domestically developed technology, intended as a direct challenge to US and European aircraft manufacturers’ dominance of the industry.
Comac’s website boasts the aircraft will incorporate cutting-edge technology with “Chinese characteristics”.
The plane - still on the drawing board - is scheduled to begin test flights in 2014 with a view to entering commercial service in 2016.
In contrast to the mainland media hype, however, the C919, with up to 168 seats, will be no “Jumbo”. The two-engine jet will be considerably smaller than Boeing’s flagship 747, which can accommodate up to 624 passengers, and is more likely to compete with the smaller Boeing 737 and Airbus A320 jets widely used on short to medium-haul routes.
However, major obstacles will have to be overcome.
The ARJ21 has been constantly marred by setbacks. The plane was originally scheduled to go into commercial service in 2007, but the first aircraft was not completed until November 2008.
Despite repeated assurances from Comac that the first aircraft would be delivered to Chengdu Airlines by the end of last year, that has now been pushed back until sometime in the second half of this year.
Industry insiders pour cold water on expectations that Comac could pose a serious challenge to the likes of Airbus and Boeing in the immediate future.
A senior engineer with experience supervising mainland factories producing components for a leading international jet-engine manufacturer said lax safety regulations and sloppy quality control were rife in the industry.
He said the Chinese aeronautics industry was using “40-year-old technology” and it was unlikely the country would be able to produce a wholly domestically developed jet engine in the near future.
He said the only way he could envisage it being able to do so would be through industrial espionage - something which was a major concern in the industry.
“We try only to produce components in China for which the technology is already widely known,” he said. “There are certain key components where we have developed the technology ourselves and only we know how to do. I have fought hard to make sure we never make those parts in China because people would simply copy them, and I know it is the same case with other manufacturers.”
He said his company’s biggest problem was the need to fight a constant battle against cutting corners, which he said was endemic.
In one factory, supervisors had been completing documents vouching measurements of components down to thousandths of a millimetre - essential information to gauge the product’s worthiness - but he discovered the factory’s measuring equipment was only able to accurately measure to tenths of a millimetre.
“I asked them how they managed to file readings to three decimal places and was simply told, ‘We guessed’,” he said.
“As a mechanical engineer, working in tenths of a millimetre for components of precision engineering is unheard of.”
Although the problem was corrected on the particular line where it had been identified, the manufacturer did not think to replicate the change across similar product lines in the same factory until pressed hard.
What’s more, the engineer said the mainland manufacturer actively campaigned to discredit him with his employer in an attempt to dissuade him from probing the company’s practices and probably uncovering other problems.
“Now that is really dangerous,” he said.
Worryingly, similar quality concerns and safety issues have been raised in the high-speed rail construction drive.
Last month, civil engineering researchers said they were concerned the breakneck speed that high-speed rail track was being laid meant that quality was being sacrificed.
Wang Lan, a lead scientist at the Cement and New Building Materials Academy, said the use of low-grade construction materials was “almost inevitable” and was likely to cut the network’s lifespan by half.
Williams said that if industry standards were not raised quickly, it could fundamentally undermine the country’s efforts to project a high-technology national image.
“It will only take a few crashes on the high-speed rail for the whole strategy to fall apart,” he said.
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Mainland railway and air transport sectors undergo hi-tech revolution
Will Clem in Shanghai
11 February 2011
On land and in the skies, the mainland is in the grips of an unprecedented transport revolution that has potentially far-reaching economic ramifications.
From Qiqihar in the far northeast to Dali in Yunnan province, from Urumqi in Xinjiang to Shenzhen, the entire nation will soon be interlinked with a vast network of high-speed trains.
In a hangar on the outskirts of Shanghai, engineers are furiously working to build the mainland’s newest and in many respects the first domestically designed-and-built large commercial jet, which state leaders hope may one day be able to compete on an even footing with aviation giants such as Boeing and Airbus.
The seemingly unconnected transport projects are two prongs of a strategy central to the 12th five-year plan to 2015.
The development of both high-speed rail and aerospace engineering is crucial to establishing China’s image as a technological innovator rather than simply the world’s factory, a monstrous assembly line crudely producing goods designed and perfected elsewhere.
The central government is determined to push the mainland economy up the quality ladder, away from the mass manufacturing of low-end products towards high-value, high-technology products that provide a far greater return on investment - and these high-profile projects are integral to shifting the international perception of China’s industries in that direction.
Mark Williams, a senior China economist for Capital Economics, said the central government’s aims were rooted in the desire to swiftly improve national living standards, but he questioned the feasibility of the ambitious timeframes.
“The central government wants to be in sectors where productivity increases very rapidly, and that tends to be at the high end,” Williams said. “The risk is whether China really can compete at that high level.”
He warned the strategy seemed to run against the conventional wisdom of emerging markets focusing on their “competitive advantages” of low-cost, low-skill sectors.
“The normal argument is that emerging economies such as China should stick to what they do best, and should steer clear of cutting-edge sectors,” Williams said. “Countries like China don’t tend to have the technical capacities or a workforce that is able to produce efficiently at that level.”
However, he said that China’s size meant the country had more flexibility to force through structural changes and to punch above its position on the developmental curve.
“Although they claim the high-speed rail was indigenously developed, in reality, China was able to get its hands on Japanese technology relatively cheaply by offering access to its huge market,” Williams said.
However, he added that a major shift by China into high-technology sectors that more developed nations tended to view as their own territory could accentuate the already tense issue of trade imbalances.
“America doesn’t make cheap socks,” he said. “Once you go head-to-head with the likes of Boeing, then that’s another matter entirely.
“If China does go down that route, then I think we will see a lot more instances of protectionism occurring.”
The immense drive to expand the high-speed rail network is one of the most ambitious infrastructure projects ever seen and has been compared in scope to the rapid development of a system of interstate highways in the United States in the late 1950s.
The Ministry of Railways aims to have 25,000 kilometres of newly built high-speed track by 2015, according to the ministry’s chief planner Zheng Jian . The project is projected to require annual investment of 700 billion yuan (HK$827.75 billion), totalling 3.5 trillion yuan over the course of the five-year plan.
However, the booming high-speed rail industry is not only a game-changer in terms of transport. It is seen as a potential cash cow on the regional and world stage - particularly after a “domestically developed” high-speed train set a new conventional railway speed record of 416.6km per hour during a test of the Shanghai-Hangzhou line.
At the beginning of last year, the Ministry of Railways signed a deal with the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China to help mainland firms fight for rail contracts on the international market, and there are signs the tactic is bearing fruit.
Mainland manufacturers have been making inroads into the regional market - including deals to build railways in Thailand and Malaysia - and have designs on the global stage.
CSR Corp, the world’s leading manufacturer of electric locomotives, announced in December last year it was launching a joint venture with US conglomerate General Electric to bid for high-speed rail projects in the US.
That deal followed on from then-California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger heaping praise on China’s high-speed rail drive while on a trip to Shanghai in September, during which he expressed interest in using Chinese trains for his state’s proposed high-speed network.
Vice-Premier Li Keqiang was also reported to have held discussions with British Prime Minister David Cameron about Chinese involvement in a future high-speed rail project during an official visit to Britain last month.
Progress on turning the mainland into a giant in the aviation sector has yet to net the same returns, but the country’s aims are no less ambitious.
The Commercial Aircraft Corp of China (Comac) is on the cusp of introducing its 100-seater ARJ21 regional jet - which has been under development since 2002 - into commercial service, and is working on a larger airliner which has been widely touted as “China’s Jumbo”.
In contrast to the ARJ21, which uses two specially developed jet engines manufactured by GE, the larger C919 is to be entirely designed and built in China using domestically developed technology, intended as a direct challenge to US and European aircraft manufacturers’ dominance of the industry.
Comac’s website boasts the aircraft will incorporate cutting-edge technology with “Chinese characteristics”.
The plane - still on the drawing board - is scheduled to begin test flights in 2014 with a view to entering commercial service in 2016.
In contrast to the mainland media hype, however, the C919, with up to 168 seats, will be no “Jumbo”. The two-engine jet will be considerably smaller than Boeing’s flagship 747, which can accommodate up to 624 passengers, and is more likely to compete with the smaller Boeing 737 and Airbus A320 jets widely used on short to medium-haul routes.
However, major obstacles will have to be overcome.
The ARJ21 has been constantly marred by setbacks. The plane was originally scheduled to go into commercial service in 2007, but the first aircraft was not completed until November 2008.
Despite repeated assurances from Comac that the first aircraft would be delivered to Chengdu Airlines by the end of last year, that has now been pushed back until sometime in the second half of this year.
Industry insiders pour cold water on expectations that Comac could pose a serious challenge to the likes of Airbus and Boeing in the immediate future.
A senior engineer with experience supervising mainland factories producing components for a leading international jet-engine manufacturer said lax safety regulations and sloppy quality control were rife in the industry.
He said the Chinese aeronautics industry was using “40-year-old technology” and it was unlikely the country would be able to produce a wholly domestically developed jet engine in the near future.
He said the only way he could envisage it being able to do so would be through industrial espionage - something which was a major concern in the industry.
“We try only to produce components in China for which the technology is already widely known,” he said. “There are certain key components where we have developed the technology ourselves and only we know how to do. I have fought hard to make sure we never make those parts in China because people would simply copy them, and I know it is the same case with other manufacturers.”
He said his company’s biggest problem was the need to fight a constant battle against cutting corners, which he said was endemic.
In one factory, supervisors had been completing documents vouching measurements of components down to thousandths of a millimetre - essential information to gauge the product’s worthiness - but he discovered the factory’s measuring equipment was only able to accurately measure to tenths of a millimetre.
“I asked them how they managed to file readings to three decimal places and was simply told, ‘We guessed’,” he said.
“As a mechanical engineer, working in tenths of a millimetre for components of precision engineering is unheard of.”
Although the problem was corrected on the particular line where it had been identified, the manufacturer did not think to replicate the change across similar product lines in the same factory until pressed hard.
What’s more, the engineer said the mainland manufacturer actively campaigned to discredit him with his employer in an attempt to dissuade him from probing the company’s practices and probably uncovering other problems.
“Now that is really dangerous,” he said.
Worryingly, similar quality concerns and safety issues have been raised in the high-speed rail construction drive.
Last month, civil engineering researchers said they were concerned the breakneck speed that high-speed rail track was being laid meant that quality was being sacrificed.
Wang Lan, a lead scientist at the Cement and New Building Materials Academy, said the use of low-grade construction materials was “almost inevitable” and was likely to cut the network’s lifespan by half.
Williams said that if industry standards were not raised quickly, it could fundamentally undermine the country’s efforts to project a high-technology national image.
“It will only take a few crashes on the high-speed rail for the whole strategy to fall apart,” he said.
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