China's many roads to prosperity

hfni

China's many roads to prosperity
By Kent Ewing
HONG KONG - Build it and they will come. But it is not a field of dreams that the Chinese government is building for the country's 1.3 billion people; it is a highway - or, rather, a grand network of highways that by 2035 is scheduled to expand to 85,000 kilometers. That's 10,000km longer than the United States' Interstate highway system, currently the world's biggest.
Progress on China's national expressway system is moving fast, and as the highway network grows, so too do the chances of success for the central government's plans to build "a new socialist countryside" and a new China for the 21st century.
Called "7-9-18", the network will be formed by seven lines emanating from
[color=]Beijing
, nine running through the country north to south, and 18 going east to west. It will cover an area with a population of 1 billion and connect all towns and cities with populations above 200,000. It will also link all major transport hubs for aviation, railway, shipping and automobiles and trucks.
The country is investing 2 trillion yuan (US$241.9 billion) in the massive project. Once it is completed, residents in the more developed eastern part of the country should be able to access the nearest expressway in an average of 30 minutes, while those living in central provinces will need an hour. In the remote and underdeveloped west, the closest expressway will be an average of two hours away.
The government considers the project a key part of its development strategy, claiming that it will allow as many as 400 million people to work their way out of poverty and into the middle class in the next 15 years. Despite more than two decades of soaring economic growth, more than 200 million people continue to live on less than $1 a day in China. The country's economic miracle has taken place mainly in the nation's urban centers and remains out of reach for many of its 800 million rural dwellers.
The widespread rural unrest sparked by the inequities of China's runaway economic growth inspired the vision of a "new socialist countryside" outlined by Premier Wen Jiabao at the National People's Congress this year. The five-year development blueprint contained a number of pledges to raise productivity and the quality of life for Chinese farmers, including the abolition of the 2,000-year-old agricultural tax.
President Hu Jintao has also made improving life in the countryside a major national theme. The government will spend $42.4 billion on rural development this year, a 14.2% increase over last year.
Meanwhile, China's highway network expands day by day, kilometer by kilometer, increasingly providing the infrastructure to turn this vision into reality. While no one expects a completed expressway system to eliminate the urban-rural wealth gap (it has not done so in the US), by all accounts it will make a significant impact.
Work on the expressway system began in 1988, when road transport was mostly a privilege of the elite. By January of this year, according to the China Daily, 41,000km of the system had been completed, of which 24,000km had been built in 2001-05 at a breakneck pace of 4,800km a year.
"Our plan for the next five years is to maintain the same speed as in the previous five years," Dai Dongchang, director of the Transport Planning and Research Institute, told the state-run newspaper, adding: "Building roads is an ideal way to help the economy grow."
In fact, investment in infrastructure is proceeding at such a pace that it is perceived by economists as part of the general problem of economic overheating in China. According to figures released last month by the National Bureau of Statistics, total investment in roads, factory equipment and fixed assets rose 29.8% in the first half of the year, an increase of 4.4% over the same period last year.
With inflation still moderate, however - the Consumer Price Index has risen only 1.3% over the past year - Chinese officials tend to play down fears of overheating while the roadworks continue apace.
In the southern city of Guangzhou alone, work will soon begin on 12 new expressways that will stretch through the southern and northern parts of the city. The city has allocated $2.6 billion for transportation this year. Guangzhou, capital of
[color=]Guangdong
province, aims to become a logistics and transportation hub that rivals nearby
[color=]Hong Kong
in the lucrative Pearl River Delta region.
Construction is also expected to begin this year on expressways running from Fuzhou (in the southeastern province of
[color=]Fujian
), Chengdu (in
[color=]Sichuan
in the southwest), Hefei (in
[color=]Anhui
in the southeast) and Lanzhou (in
[color=]Gansu
in the northwest).
Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the expanding expressway network is the plan to link the mainland with
[color=]Taiwan
, which sits 200km off the coast and has been regarded by Beijing as a renegade province since the defeated Kuomintang, led by Chiang Kai-shek, fled there after the communist takeover in 1949.
With reunification a perennial hot-button topic between Beijing and Taipei, few details have been released about the means of the proposed link (although a tunnel has been mentioned), and the timetable has been left as vague as possible. But since the two governments currently allow only limited direct air connections between Taiwan and the mainland, even the vague thought of a leisurely drive from Beijing to Taipei has raised a few eyebrows.
Expressway construction is different in China than in most other countries in that the 7-9-18 links are toll roads largely financed, built and operated by private companies under contract from provincial governments. The contracts establish a period of private ownership during which the companies recoup their investment. After that, local governments take over. This has meant that roads go up fast and furious in the more populous and prosperous regions of the country, while it remains to be seen how truly connected remote western provinces will wind up.
As with so many things in China, the vision is greater than the reality. But the two are coming closer together all the time.
Kent Ewing is a teacher and writer at Hong Kong International School. He can be reached at kewing@hkis.edu.hk.