
Empty trains on the modern Silk Road: when Belt and Road interests don’t align - yorwba
https://pandapawdragonclaw.blog/2019/08/23/empty-trains-on-the-modern-silk-road-when-belt-and-road-interests-dont-align/
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kposehn
This has been rumored for some time on various railfan groups across the web
and I've always figured it to be true. In a few instances, people have called
out that trains are moving too quickly up grades for their supposed load or
are way underpowered for a train if all the containers were full. It's all
been a bit suspect.

This has only fueled a lot of skepticism about the BRI. There's a few primary
reasons for this:

1\. Break of gauge: Any of the current routes require gauge changes between 5'
and 4'8.5". Each time this occurs it incurs either (a) translating costs to
move containers from railcar to railcar, or (b) bogie change costs. This both
slows it down and adds significant labor expense to the endeavor which reduces
competitiveness vs sea. Talgo (in Spain) makes gauge-changing bogies which
theoretically can handle this, but they are not designed for the tonnage nor
are they particularly well-suited to the extreme conditions found on the
routes.

2\. Axle Loading & Loading Gauge: The axle loads across the different networks
are highly variable, requiring cars only be as heavy as the lightest network
they travel on. In addition, the loading gauges are much tighter in Europe,
resulting in only single containers of shorter length being allowed on COFC
trains (Container on Flat Car)

This isn't to say the problems aren't surmountable, just that they have not
yet been and it is going to be difficult to do so in the future.

~~~
baybal2
The explanation is more simple:

1\. Russia

2\. Kazakhstan

Both charge Chinese trains many times more than their own rate. All those mind
boggling subsidies basically translate into handing out free money to them for
hauling air.

And even if they were to be billed fairly, both Russian and Kazakhstani
railways are both living from bailout to bailout themselves as:

1\. Rail infrastructure is falling apart without a single major upgrade since
the collapse of the Union

2\. Rail is a patently bottomless watering hole for the bureaucrats running it

3\. Most of money on the rail is spent on maintenance of unprofitable, and
deeply underused routes god knows where in order to solicit more bailout money

4\. Everything on Russian rail is done in the most inefficient way possible,
also in order to solicit more bailouts. It is 2019, and Russia still uses
human signallers, wooden ties, and sand ballast. Even passenger cars are still
heated with firewood.

~~~
Gustomaximus
With point 4, while I'm assuming it's just inefficient, is it credible this is
strategic? In the event of war and EMP or cyber attack their supply lines can
function as normal type thing?

~~~
kposehn
Russia looks more to the railroads for national security and employment, not
profitability. They do work well enough, but in a war would not be nearly as
effective as if they’d been properly managed in the first place.

~~~
LargoLasskhyfv
They have

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Railway_Troops](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Railway_Troops)

Beat that!

------
contingencies
This article argues against the premise that the _power and “deep pocket” of
the Chinese state can overcome problems that the market cannot solve when left
alone_ , but misses the forest for the trees. Obviously China doesn't attempt
this category of infrastructure projects because they have to make immediate
economic sense. They tackle them for political and long term geostrategic
purposes. Some side benefits are that it's cheaper than US-style global
military hegemony, far more permanent, and more readily accepted by
populations. For example our local project
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HKZMB](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HKZMB)
cost USD$18.8B which is less than twelve days of the current US military
budget of USD$1.65B per day, a lot cheaper and more acceptable than invading
Hong Kong and effectively the crown jewel and literal gateway to one of the
most populated areas and busiest shipping lanes on the planet. Plus bragging
rights. See also impressive road and rail infrastructure through Yunnan, rail
to Tibet and Southeast Asia, etc.

~~~
LargoLasskhyfv
Doesn't seem wrong to me. WRT military spending i'm always thinking that "we"
as species have the capacity to rain down death and fire over and over again.
Yet, when there is a large forest fire somewhere, doesn't matter where,
happens all the times, we lack the capacity to effectively rain down water to
douse it. Maybe i`ve played too much SimCity, but that's how i see it.

Utter failure.

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Apocryphon
So, a continuation of the same "construction of the sake of the appearance of
growth" phenomena that we saw with ghost cities?

~~~
adinobro
Except lots of the original ghost cities are now full.

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2016/04/23/chinas-l...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2016/04/23/chinas-
largest-ghost-city-is-now-90-full-but-theres-a-twist/#6812d9f167c8)

The probably is that a journalist that doesn't understand how China works
stumbled onto a construction zone and didn't understand what they saw. Chinese
build housing for half a million people at once fairly regularly. I've gone
past multiple constructions sites like this.

They also build whole cities (which the ghost cities story was about) and they
fill up. A bunch of people pre-buy and once they get a minimum buy-in they
start construction. Once the city is mostly finished it still takes a while
for everything else to be done inside BUT in China, they don't fence of
construction sites at this stage while in developed countries they do. You can
just walk in and look around. There are no squatters laws so people cannot
just take your property and there are fewer liability issues so they don't
really care.

~~~
cannonedhamster
Uh... Did you read the article you cited? It literally said the area is still
empty they just stopped including it as part of the city and only included the
inhabited part, though that part was already full of people before those
buildings went up. It's more of a quirk in how cities are defined as
administrative regions instead of distinct urban areas. The buildings are
still empty though. Like most things in China it's lots of talk and flash,
little real magic behind the show.

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mycall
I feel after this article, things will change.

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throwawayeyrh
China's government certainly deserves criticism, but I notice that there has
been a big increase in posts critical of China on large forums such as Reddit
and Hacker News in the last half-year or so, which leads me to suspect that
some such posts may be astroturfed or inspired by astroturfing. The Hong Kong
situation could explain some of it, but the increase I refer to began before
the recent Hong Kong crisis.

~~~
yorwba
Since dang apparently decided to enable replying to this comment, let me
explain why I submitted the article. I've been following the Panda Paw Dragon
Claw blog for about a year because spending time in China has raised my
awareness for various ongoing developments there, and I think the blog
provides an interesting analytical perspective.

I submitted this article in particular because I think it gives a good
description of the various actors involved in the BRI and how their competing
interests cause them to undermine each other. I've noticed that many people
seem to think of China as a single actor, a brutally efficient totalitarian
state controlling everything within its reach, and as a result they don't
distinguish clearly between the central government, local governments, state-
owned enterprises, private companies and individual Chinese people
participating in discussions online. I don't think that is due to malice or
disinformation spread by the media, but simply due to a too simple model
caused by unfamiliarity.

So my hope is that this article can lift the veil of homogeneity a little bit
and help people gain an understanding of the underlying complexity.

