China Until 2050, construction sites everywhere
Not everything is perfect in China. Recent official Chinese publications glaring shortcomings in the country's rail and road communications networks. Outside the most developed provinces, China has yet to be built. Admittedly, it will be able to count on a network of freeways, which will structure the country - by 2023, the equivalent of the French network will be in service. But next to it, there's nothing. Two-lane national roads, equivalent to the French départementales, and thousands of communes, right up to towns of 100,000 inhabitants, are still very difficult to access. The Chinese government agrees that it will be 2050 before the entire country is equipped a communications network comparable to Western networks. We need to be aware of this. In 2024, there will still be two Chinas living side by side: one with the world's second-largest high-tech and defense industries, and the other, the country's interior, which may still be close to the China of yesteryear.
FACTS
On February 28, 2024, Li Xiaopeng (李小鹏), Minister of Transport, gave an update on China's transport infrastructure development programs, with announcements of new links and figures broken down to regional level, providing a glimpse of an unexpected aspect of China's reality: a country that has yet to equip itself with the communication routes of a modern nation1.
CHALLENGES
By 2050, have the road network of an advanced country.
FORWARD-LOOKING COMMENTS
China makes no secret of the fact that it is far from having the road and rail links of a modern country, as the website of the Chinese Ministry of Transport2 makes clear without too much concealment.
National networks as they will be in 2023
Before the road took over, it was the railroads that China put forward as the preferred means of communication [just like France until the 1960s]. It boasts the world's largest rail network: 159,000 km, including 40,000 km of high-speed trains3.
When it comes to roads, nothing could be further from the truth. Starting from scratch 50 years ago, road networks are still far from what you'd expect to find in a large country. The government has given priority to freeways, leaving the development of ancillary networks to the provinces. Much remains to be done.
By the end of 2022, the number of kilometers of Chinese expressways (including freeways) in service had reached 177,000 km4. A figure that can be compared with the 75000 km5 of freeways in the Europe of 27.
On the other hand, the Chinese authorities are very discreet when it comes to national highways, which are in fact two-lane roads similar to French departmental roads. Beijing considers these roads to be first-rate achievements, and presents them as exemplary.
Air routes. According to the Ministry of Transport:
more than 620 million passengers used Chinese airlines in 2023 ;
they used 259 airports open to passenger traffic, including 38 with annual traffic in excess of 10 million.
For reference, in France :
180 million passengers for 40 airports in mainland France, with significant traffic volumes;
5 of them handled more than 10 million passengers.
Chinese air traffic is still in its infancy.
The reality of the regions
But we can't be satisfied with these global views. The reality of the country can only be perceived if we scrutinize the state of the provinces. The China Highway Network6 website reports on current and planned road programs, and includes the proceedings of the "Conference on Work in Transport", which give precise indications of the programs of the 23 provinces (Taiwan is one of them).
The map of freeway and trunk road networks shows the disparities between the various regions.
When you travel the 4,000 km from Fuzhou, the capital of Fujian, to Kashi in Xinjiang, everything can change, and the outlying regions remain isolated. Official reports reveal that each region, with its own budget, is developing secondary networks connected to the national network, in particular freeways (Cf. Box 1).
Outside the vicinity of major cities and freeways, these networks are proving highly inadequate. On the whole, roads are two-lane, with a loose network, and towns with 100,000 inhabitants can remain difficult to reach. These shortcomings are intolerable in a country that aspires to be a great nation.
Transport services on the up
The primary purpose of China's communications networks is to transport goods, creating a logistical infrastructure on a continental scale.
According to Ministry of Transport statistics, 54.75 billion tonnes of freight were transported in 2023, up 16.9% since 2019, the pre-covid reference year:
by road: 40.34 billion tonnes ;
by inland waterway: 9.37 billion tonnes. With a modal share of 17%, almost three times higher than that of Europe as a whole (6%), river transport is at the forefront;
by rail: 5.04 billion tonnes. Traffic up by only 1%. It is reduced to bulk convoys of coal, cereals, fertilizers, etc.
Passenger transport is growing steadily, reaching 61.25 billion trips in 2023, an average of 4.3 annual trips per person.
Courier services are thriving. Delivered to people's doorsteps, express delivery companies handled 132 billion parcels in 2023, an average of 93 parcels per inhabitant. This is a world record. Europeans receive an average of just 13 items per year, with Germany topping the list with 46.6 items. Why this singularity? The ups and downs of China's history have meant that there are few stores on street corners, so as standards of living have risen, retail logistics that enable remote ordering have taken hold.
For many years to come, China will have to structure itself
A brief presentation of China's communications networks revealed their disparate nature: a spectacular network of highways, but downstream, a very poorly structured China. China is aware of this. Progress is imperative, and China is paying the price.
Countless construction projects are planned throughout the country to build "a powerful transport nation". A concept of global, intelligent and green transport which, according to the Minister of Transport, "is inspired by Xi Jinping's thinking on Chinese-style socialism for a new era".
China's rail network is continuing to grow, and not by half-measures. By 2023, 2,776 km7 of high-speed track had been opened to TGV traffic, as much as the entire French network, 2,735 km8.
The roads of the future are outlined in the report "Planning the national road network", published on July 12, 2022. It sets out how the national road network will evolve up to 2035, reaching around 460,000 km, with around 2.4% of GDP allocated to it9.
The central backbone, a national network of freeways, meshed, structuring, composed :
7 radial lines departing from the capital,
11 vertical north-south lines,
18 horizontal east-west lines,
6 peripheral lines.
Expanding into difficult geographical areas will require proliferation of spectacular engineering structures, which China will standardize in order industrialize their construction. This network will be complemented by a set of national highways, which will provide a "basic transport service", with smaller towns and villages only accessible via secondary roads.
We're still a long way from total fluidity. The Vice-Minister of Communication, lucid, goes so far as to admit: "It won't be until 2050 that the road network will extend over 4 million km with characteristics comparable to those of developed countries".
The world's second-largest economy and most influential country is still a work in progress. For many years to come, two Chinas will continue to coexist in the same space
a glittering China, with technologies, industry and sciences increasingly present, giving China and its army second place in the world;
a domestic China, striving to catch up with Western nations, not only in terms of infrastructure, but also in terms of the services the nation must provide its citizens throughout their lives. Health and services, social services that guarantee a minimum of dignity and perhaps even, we must hope, on the distant horizon, spaces of freedom.
Edouard Valensi, Asie21
- China expands transport network to facilitate high quality development, Xinhua, February 2024
- Ministry of Transport of the People's Republic of China, https://www.mot.gov.cn/zhengce/
- Le Grand Continent, https://legrandcontinent.eu/fr/2022/12/12/le-reseau-ferroviaire-a-grande-vitesse-chinois/, December 2022
- http://french.peopledaily.com.cn/Economie/n3/2023/1124/c31355-20101794.html
- Statistics| Eurostat
- China Highway Network, https://www.chinahighway.com/spec/?id=65403305
- https://french.news.cn/20240109/c773ddfb28164d4097dbea5bf5373327/c.html
- https://fr.statista.com/infographie/22122/plus-grands-reseaux-ferroviaires-a-grande-vitesse-au-monde-lgv/
- China to build 461,000 km of highways by 2035, world-class highway network by 2050, Global Times, 12/07/2022
Box 1
A network for every province
Each province is unique, with its own personality, geography and communications network. To appreciate the diversity of each province, without having to dwell on all of them, it's enough to review three regions: Henan, central and developed, an intermediate region, Sichuan, and a peripheral province, Fujian, to reveal the diversity of situations encountered.
Henan
Henan, a developed and prosperous province :
covers an area of 167,000 km² ;
has a population of 97.8 million, 6 times that of France1.
The province's transport budget is modest: 150 billion yuan (€200 per inhabitant). Nevertheless, the year 2023 saw the commissioning of :
4 freeway sections with a total length of 312 km,
8,300 km of expressway network.
At the same time, 9,149 km of rural roads were rebuilt. It was honored for its pilot project for high-quality rural roads that contribute to shared prosperity.
Sichuan,
In China's southwest region, Sichuan, with its 485,000 km² and 83 million inhabitants, has earmarked 268.5 billion yuan (4,300 euros per person) for the construction of freeways and waterways. In 2023, 624 km of freeways were opened to traffic, bringing the total network to 9,803 km, ranking it 3rd in the country2.
Additional information
- 3,400 km of major roads are under construction,
- 19,000 km of rural roads have been rebuilt.
Fujian
Facing Taiwan, Fujian,
- a mountainous region covering 121,000 km²,
- 41.5 million inhabitants
is investing 102.2 billion yuan (€313 per capita) in the development of its road network3.
It's not much.
The Fujian highway is only used on the coastal sections
- it remains deserted elsewhere,
- it is designed to be a platform for economic and social development and rural revitalization,
- and, downstream, to open up mountain towns and villages.
In 2023, the province opened or renovated 2,540 km of rural roads, and 1,713 villages were made accessible by "hardened roads.
By the end of the 14(th) plan, the province will have invested over 43 billion yuan in the Fujian section of the G228 national highway, which runs along the coast from the North Korean border to Vietnam.
China on the edge
The further one moves away from industrialized regions, the greater the deficiencies. The vast Xinjiang,
three times the size of France,
claims a mere 230,000 km from all networks to paved roads4.
Tibet is in such a state of underdevelopment that we're delighted to be able to reach 200 new villages by tarmac road5.
This China of the farthest reaches is criss-crossed by extreme routes, the most spectacular of which is the G219 road that links Tibet to Xinjiang, skirting the Himalayas. This strategic border road stretches for 2,107 km and culminates at the border between Tibet and Xinjiang, after the last Tibetan village of Tserang Daban, at 5,050 meters above sea level.
Edouard Valensi, Asie21
