Why has China Advanced as Rapidly as the Bullet-Train Technology It Commands?
On average, I travel to China two or three times a year for business. On this occasion, three colleagues and I covered 14 cities in just two weeks---Shanghai, Taicang, Shijiazhuang, Fangcheng, Zhengzhou, Dongying, Binzhou, Wuxi, Taizhou, Nanjing, Ningbo, Shenzhen, Dongguan, and Guangzhou. Thanks to an expansive bullet-train network that now reaches nearly every corner of the country, the journey felt effortless---truly remarkable.
I vividly recall my first trip to China in 1998, when I accompanied my supervisor from a firm in Tangerang. Domestic travel then meant enduring overnight trains (huch, ): cramped cabins with two-tier wooden bunks, thin mats, shared pillows, and blankets of questionable cleanliness. Between 1998 and 2006 I visited China frequently---often training in Wuxi---and every journey still involved those exhausting night trains.
Today, by contrast, the China Railway High-speed (CRH) system links virtually every city, large and small. China now operates some 3,600 high-speed trainsets---the world's largest fleet---allowing seamless, rapid domestic travel.
*Staggering Economic Growth*
From 1998 to 2024, China's economy expanded at an average rate exceeding 9 percent per year. GDP soared from USD 1.03 trillion in 1998 to USD 18.8 trillion in 2024---an unprecedented trajectory in modern economic history. When I first visited Wuxi 26 years ago, skyscrapers and automobiles were scarce; bicycles and rattling scooters dominated the streets. Today the skyline blazes with LED-lit towers, and futuristic EVs, HEVs, PHEVs, and conventional cars---many equipped with advanced autopilot features---fill the roads. A colleague noted that mainland China now hosts more than 100 domestic EV brands, many still unknown outside the country.
*An Integrated Industrial Ecosystem*
China's industrial landscape---from light manufacturing to heavy industry and high-tech sectors---is organized into regional clusters underpinned by mature supply chains. If a product needs powder coating, for instance, manufacturers simply outsource to a specialized service provider; they need not invest in their own costly coating lines. By contrast, Indonesian firms often shoulder such investments individually, driving up costs and eroding competitiveness. China's comprehensive industrial ecosystem sets it apart.
In medical technology, the government has poured substantial funding into R&D centers in Beijing, staffing them with PhD engineers and professors to develop software-centric prototypes. Once validated, these prototypes and codebases are sold to firms ready to commercialize them. At the China Medical Expo Forum (CMEF) it is now common to see domestically produced CT and MRI machines---nearly identical in hardware save for user interfaces---competing alongside global brands such as GE, Siemens, Philips, and Hitachi at sharply lower prices.
*Tourism and Global Standing*
International arrivals rose from 63.5 million in 1998 to a pre-pandemic peak of 143.5 million in 2019---remarkable for a nation that once practiced strict isolationism. Deng Xiaoping's reforms propelled China from backwater to superpower, now the world's second-largest economy: U.S. GDP is projected at USD 30.5 trillion in 2025, followed by China at USD 19.2 trillion. Many analysts expect China to claim the top spot within 15--20 years.
