The Chinese cities of Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and the Hong Kong Special Administration Region are planning to design and build a maglev train system with a speed of 650 kilometers per hour (404 miles per hour), that will link all three cities, and then extend elsewhere in China. This was disclosed at an Aug. 5 transportation infrastructure forum in Guangzhou, organized by the Chinese Academy of Engineering. This will constitute the fastest commercially operating maglev system on earth.
The plan is to build a 30-minute traffic circle among the three cities, which are part of an economic area called the Greater Bay Area (GBA) in southern China, comprising nine megacities (Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Foshan, and so forth) and the two special administrative zones of Hong Kong and Macau, with a total population of 71 million people. The output of this GBA zone, if it constituted a separate nation, would be the 12th largest in the world.
The passenger-flow density of Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong will reach 260 million people by 2035, thus a new high-speed project is a necessity for this area, said Chen Xiangsheng, an academician at the Chinese Academy of Engineering, and dean of the College of Civil and Transportation Engineering at Shenzhen University, China Daily reported Aug. 7. He introduced four optional routes. Besides Guanzhou and Shenzhen, other Chinese cities including Shanghai and Hangzhou, Chengdu, and Chongqing are also planning for maglev lines, Chen said.
The maglev trains are to be designed and built by Chinese train manufacturer CRRC Zhuzhou Locomotive Co.
While the British-U.S.-EU-NATO axis complain, with hyperventilation, about “China’s rising threat,” it is really China’s ability to conceive of, and create the industrial-scientific capability, to build maglev systems—and other advanced systems—that separates it from the dead-leaf disintegration of the West.
