PRC Economy and Industry: News and Discussions

[Hari Seldon]

^ At least a legislative beginning has been made with right to edu + NREGA. The actual means to earn enough for the year that the kids don't need to work skipping school has been made.

But that's an aside. I can't help but notice sivabala has succeeded in inserting desi child labor practice into the cheeni dhaga.

[Neshant]

Its easy to get it out of existance.

Have a law which forces employers to prove their employee's kids are in school. No proof = no job.

[Yayavar]

As Hari mentioned, can we stick to the subject of China? For non-chinee world, and how to solve problems in other parts of the world, there are other threads.

[Abhijeet]

I suppose OT is OT. But I can't help pointing out that the general context in which Chinese labour practices (and other things Chinese) are typically discussed on BR is as a compare-and-contrast with India. As in, look at how those evil Chinese make their children work in disgusting conditions for 18 hours a day, and thank God India didn't follow the same low-value-added manufacturing path that they did.

So in that context, it's not out of place for sivabala to point out that much the same happens in India. China's manufacturing scale means that all eyes are on it, but it is rapidly modernizing past the Charles Dickens stage of the industrial revolution. India is chugging along much slower and will likely have children in the workforce longer than China.

Since the industrial revolution in all its nastiness is going to happen in India whether we like it or not, I'd prefer that it be concentrated into a single generation as in China rather than spread out slowly over a couple or more as in India.

[Hari Seldon]

Abhijeet,

AFAIK, indo-cheena pi$$ing contests on this dhaga have seldom been taken kindly to either by readers themselves or the mods. Of course, was a time not too long ago when cheeni drones regularly dropped flame bombs around here and some of our more hot-headed jingoes true to form would rush in to chew the bait.

No one (AFAIK) denies the seriousness of the child labor problem. I certainly wouldn't. Would be nice to discuss it in a more structured manner in its proper thread rather than score self-goals in this dhaga. JMVVHO, of course.

[Carl_T]

It has been regulated out of existence in much of the civilised world. The state must provide education and whoever gets in the way, whether state actors or the parents have to be punished. The cycle of uneducated parents leading to uneducated children has to be broken somewhere, and this is the only way to do it.

How often has it been regulated out of existence in developing nations? I think child labour is a symptom of poverty and not the problem itself. If family incomes are sufficient, then children would be going to school. Certainly there are some parents that might not value education, but when the children need to work to make ends meet I don't think there is reason to regulate it out of existence.

Its easy to get it out of existance.

Have a law which forces employers to prove their employee's kids are in school. No proof = no job.

Fake certificates?

[Yayavar]

I suppose OT is OT.

Right, OT is OT. If OT then keep it out .

[Chinmayanand]

China needs to consider currency 'reforms': EU

[Hari Seldon]

China needs to consider currency 'reforms': EU

Sure. The real $64 mn question though is "else what?"

[archan]

There is a hue and cry about Chinese use of child labour. I have not seen how bad their working conditions are. But, I have seen really bad working conditions in India, where children (aged 10~15) are exploited. It is so sad seeing such conditions. If you have time and contacts please visit any of the SEZ and Industrial develoment area across many states like Karnataka, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Andhra, Tamilnadu. I personally seen child labor in all these states. It is so sad. But that's how manufacturing is done in small industries which supply to big companies, where due to trade unions or due to visibility I did not see exploitation.

Now let us get this simple fact into our head, Einstein. Shall we?
When one reports about something unacceptable happening in any country/region, then responding with something other unacceptable happening in any other region, is not going to make the first wrong, a right. Get that? Exploitation of labor is wrong, no matter where it happens, whether in India or Tumbuktu. The topic under discussion is PRC economy and the post showed why it may be hard for a country like USA to produce goods cheaper than the Chinese. That you choose to bring India into it, shows your malicious intentions to me. Be careful.

[sivabala]

....

Now let us get this simple fact into our head, Einstein. Shall we?
When one reports about something unacceptable happening in any country/region, then responding with something other unacceptable happening in any other region, is not going to make the first wrong, a right. Get that? Exploitation of labor is wrong, no matter where it happens, whether in India or Tumbuktu. The topic under discussion is PRC economy and the post showed why it may be hard for a country like USA to produce goods cheaper than the Chinese. That you choose to bring India into it, shows your malicious intentions to me. Be careful.

Oh! God!!!. I did not expect so many to reply for my passing observation.
My point was just to avoid any one starting a pi$$ing competioin between India-China on child labour, because our own back yard is not clean. The objective of my post is not to discuss about child labour or a falme bait, but just a passing observation.
Though, I am not surprised that my post is construed to be off topic.
However, your geniusness of figuring out hidden malicious intentions in my post, I think, is your figment of imagination.
Especially the finishing words of your post that are semi-threatening is too "un-moderatory" (If there is such a word). I would suggest you modify your words.
Also, guys dont be defensive when someone point out your deficiencies. It is better to accept the problem and work on to improve it.

[archan]

Thank you for your suggestion. Any comments on moderation should go in the feedback thread. However the next time you decide to make another such "passing observation", do hope that I don't see it. Dhanyawaad.

[abhishek_sharma]

China builds 'big shoulders'

http://eurasia.foreignpolicy.com/posts/ ... _shoulders

[naren]

X post from telecom thread.

#of internet users in China looks suspicious.

Check this:
Internet Users - animation

Internet users - line chart

Increase from 139M in 2006 to 298M in 2008 . Doesn't sound believable.

[Abhijeet]

It's quite possible, and an example of a tipping point. That difference is about 160 million new connections over 2 years.

India has been adding over 10 million cell phone connections per month for a long time - that is about 120 million new connections per year. It's quite possible for China to have similar growth rates for broadband. (So could India if we fixed our broadband policies and basic governance issues.) No need for "cooking the books" theories here.

[ArmenT]

Long-hated one-child rule may be eased in China

A people shortage may seem unlikely in a country of 1.3 billion, the most in the world. The concern, though, is not with the overall number. Rather, as the population shrinks, which is projected to begin in about 15 years, China may find itself with the wrong mix of people: too few young workers to support an aging population.

[svinayak]

A people shortage may seem unlikely in a country of 1.3 billion, the most in the world. The concern, though, is not with the overall number. Rather, as the population shrinks, which is projected to begin in about 15 years, China may find itself with the wrong mix of people: too few young workers to support an aging population.

It has been a 1.3B population for the last 10 years now. It was 1.3B in 2000 and it has not changed. China is adding 3-4m every year atleast.

[Theo_Fidel]

Once the fertility rate of a country declines and people get used to not having the burden of children it is almost impossible to turn the curve.

Look at the European examples. Or Japan. Even the USA would be close to replacement with out immigration (Legal+Illegal) of 2 Million per annum. As it is entire counties in the USA are dying out.

Children are simply very very expensive in a developing country with both partners working.

A smaller population is not necessarily a bad thing, providing the present generation saves for its retirement.

[svinayak]

A smaller population is not necessarily a bad thing, providing the present generation saves for its retirement.

It is OK for a country and a culture which is built on colonial wealth. The elite have the clout in the international order. Right now there is imbalance in the world order which does no create long term stability for many developing economies

[Singha]

Shops ordered to pay £20m over 'toxic sofas'

Yvonne Dalton, speaking in 2009: "The skin just started peeling away"

A number of High Street chains have been ordered to pay up to £20m ($31m) to 2,000 people who received chemical burns from anti-fungal agents in sofas.

The victims are expected to get £1,200-£9,000 each plus other expenses for loss of weddings, holidays and wages.

The group that owns Argos and Homebase, furniture chain Walmsleys and other smaller firms had admitted liability for selling the Chinese-made sofas.

Some Land of Leather customers will not get a pay-out, after an earlier ruling.

'Swift compensation'

Richard Langton, solicitor for law firm Russell Jones and Walker, said: "People's lives were put on hold. Some people thought that they were dying, that they had skin cancer.

"Their doctors couldn't tell them what was wrong, a lot of psychological symptoms.

"Some cases were not so severe, fortunately, but for many people they say it was the worst period of their lives ever."

Mr Justice MacDuff was told in court that a "claims handling agreement" had been reached that did not resolve the whole of the litigation, but would "open the way to swift compensation for many hundreds" of people.

Mr Langton said there would be another hearing on 21 May when 2,500 further cases would be considered.

The £20m figure includes legal costs, as well as compensation.

Burned through clothes

Up to 100,000 of the sofas were sold with "highly sensitising" fungicidal chemical dimethyl fumarate (DMF) inside.

The substance was designed to stop the furniture, manufactured by Chinese companies Linkwise and Eurosofa, going mouldy in storage.

When the sofas went into people's homes the solid sachets turned into gas that burned through clothes and on to skin.
Sofa
Chemicals used to protect the sofas caused burns

The claimants were said to have suffered severe skin or eye complaints, breathing difficulties or other medical conditions.

Solicitors said the EU had now banned the use of DMF after consumers in at least five European countries suffered skin burns and breathing problems.

Another High Court judge previously ruled more than 300 customers were not entitled to compensation from Land of Leather's insurers Zurich, after the furniture firm went into administration in January 2009.

That decision is expected to be challenged in the Court of Appeal.

[naren]

It's quite possible, and an example of a tipping point. That difference is about 160 million new connections over 2 years.

India has been adding over 10 million cell phone connections per month for a long time - that is about 120 million new connections per year. It's quite possible for China to have similar growth rates for broadband. (So could India if we fixed our broadband policies and basic governance issues.) No need for "cooking the books" theories here.

I dont think we can do an = = for cell and internet. Cell phones are cheap, doesn't require training, doesn't expect too much time to be spent on.

China's middle class pop is said to be between 150-200M (its mandate from heaven, believe). So clearly there must be an overlap between the middle class & factory abduls. What I find hard to believe is that the factory abduls, after slogging out 14hrs a day/6 days a week, find time for the internet. (Besides whats the motivation, no pahhhn there ). May be our Chinese friends here can enlighten.

[naren]

X-quoting from Telecom thread.

Have you noticed that there is a systamatic way of projecting growth in PRC. For almost all indicators there is
sudden jump in certain period to show huge growth. In the 90s I was talking to one of my chinese classmate and what she said makes sense now. She said the govt was buying all the computer at that time to show huge demand and keeping the computers in storage without using it. She said most of the products are showing this kind of demand. I was not aware of the global implications of such a demand that time.
PRC got lot of investment and trade after min 90s. But the consumer data and energy data do not show that kind of growth for the last 15 years. This is part of the strategic plan using media and fake demand to increase the profile of PRC gdp.

Definitely agree with you. There's no market chaos in any of the Chini data. It looks like some one decided that the graph must go in a particular direction and it does.

Internet users per 100 people

Notice how the graph climbs up nicely at 2001 and 2006.

May be this is the reason why Google was having low market share ? To save ba(i)du's* face ?

(* badu = popular swear in TN )

[wlin]

You can call it a sweatshop but they are not child labor. These girls are students from two professional schools in Guizhou and Sichuan province. In China only after you finished 9 year mandatory education, you can be enrolled in these professional schools. They may look young but they are 16-17 years old. They are not adults and they are not Children either. I do not know what the third picture supposed to mean here. It is a training card. I do not think a Child can finish those listed courses. If she did, I would say China element school must be at the very top in the world (I supposed she finished the element school).

In China there are some bad factory owners, Owners from Taiwan and South Korea are among the worst of them. And because of politics, Taiwanese got a blind eye from government for these labor violations.

Wouldn't wages in the US have to fall literally off a cliff in order for manufacturing jobs in China to shift back to that country?

Not only wages, you'd have to make them work like this in order to be compete with your competition who is abusing human rights of the poor Chinese while turning profit.


Link to original article: We are like prisoners... We do not have a life, only work.


And you'd have to employ little children, take away their play time..

[wlin]

This is 2008 figure, the 2009 figure is 384M. broadband user is 346M, 3G user is supposed over 100M this year. In 2009, the internet reatil amount is at 250B RMB about 36.5B USD. Internet business application is booming in China.

X post from telecom thread.

#of internet users in China looks suspicious.

Check this:
Internet Users - animation

Internet users - line chart

Increase from 139M in 2006 to 298M in 2008 . Doesn't sound believable.

[wlin]

Not right now. But I do expect it will go away in 10 years. The employee pressure is still high. You still got 17 million people entered work force every year. So the pressure is still there.

Long-hated one-child rule may be eased in China

A people shortage may seem unlikely in a country of 1.3 billion, the most in the world. The concern, though, is not with the overall number. Rather, as the population shrinks, which is projected to begin in about 15 years, China may find itself with the wrong mix of people: too few young workers to support an aging population.

[svinayak]

http://shadow.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2 ... ent-171036

Does China control the fate of the U.S. labor market? Fred Bergsten, the distinguished director of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, writes that persuading China to boost the value of its currency would be "by far the most cost-effective possible step to reduce the unemployment rate and help speed economic recovery" in the United States.

He claims that "such a trade correction would generate an additional 600,000 to 1.2 million jobs." In this claim he actually underbids competitors such as Paul Krugman (1.4 million jobs) of the New York Times and Rob Scott (2.4 million) of the Economic Policy Institute. Praiseworthy as Bergsten's moderation may be, how does one get a number like his?

The Federal Reserve is struggling to boost the economy. Perhaps the old truths do not apply? Perhaps in these difficult times, a cut in the trade deficit will boost jobs? We can check empirically. From July 2008 to February 2010, the U.S. monthly trade deficit with the world shrank from $65 billion to $40 billion. By Bergsten's reasoning, that should have created 150,000 jobs per month, or 1.8 million at an annual rate. In fact, we lost 7.2 million jobs over the same period.

One might object to this sort of empirical refutation: of course there were other things going on! You cannot just assume that trade explains everything or rely so heavily on a rule of thumb calculation. We need a more sophisticated model.

Just so. We have a more sophisticated model, from Ray Fair, a macroeconomist at Yale. With careful econometric estimation, he finds that, on balance, China's currency undervaluation in recent years was a slight positive for U.S. job creation. This is the opposite of Bergsten's contention.

As I have argued at length elsewhere, China ought to revalue its currency, but this should not be seen as a major U.S. jobs program

[wlin]

I do not know how many middle class China have. The four wheels auto sales in China is 13M. This year probably 17M. 80 percent of them are private owners. Urban population is 50% of Chinese population now. This figure do not include migration worker. Every year 7 million college graduates entered the job market. I do not see why you think this number suspicious.

In Dongguan, the manufacturing hub, which got millions of migration worker and thousands of so called sweetshop. You may not know is there are also thousands of internet cafés in Dongguan with average size of 300 computers.

You may think the migration worker cannot afford it. The cheap netbook in China is 1000 – 2000 RMB level and good enough to surf the web. The following link is for cheap netbook which target internet users. You can see the price there.
http://product.pconline.com.cn/umpc/p4148/s4.shtml

It took at most two month savings for the sweet slave to buy one netbook and surf the net. So is that really such a big deal?

It's quite possible, and an example of a tipping point. That difference is about 160 million new connections over 2 years.

India has been adding over 10 million cell phone connections per month for a long time - that is about 120 million new connections per year. It's quite possible for China to have similar growth rates for broadband. (So could India if we fixed our broadband policies and basic governance issues.) No need for "cooking the books" theories here.

I dont think we can do an = = for cell and internet. Cell phones are cheap, doesn't require training, doesn't expect too much time to be spent on.

China's middle class pop is said to be between 150-200M (its mandate from heaven, believe). So clearly there must be an overlap between the middle class & factory abduls. What I find hard to believe is that the factory abduls, after slogging out 14hrs a day/6 days a week, find time for the internet. (Besides whats the motivation, no pahhhn there ). May be our Chinese friends here can enlighten.

[wlin]

This means that majority of Chinese personal income got to the certain level to consume those products. If you look at the late 70s figure, you may wonder why China’s bike consumption got jumped. If you look at late 80s figure, you may wonder why TV sales jumped. Then refrigerator, washing machines, fixed line phone, cell phone. Now you see the car sales jumps again. Why you think internet user is a big deal?

For example QQ, they have 400 million active users, their record is 100 million user simultaneously online chatting using QQ. QQ is the cash machine in my eyes.

For Google, their market share is definitely overestimated. I guess they claimed the ad revenue as market share because there are a lot of Chinese company buy google ads to target global users. But for search purpose, vast majority do not use Google. They simply do not understand Chinese characters. They may do good in French, Germany or Russia but not in China. I think their market share in Japan and South Korea also pretty low. I guess the reason maybe either these two countries ruled by dictatorship or their internet population way overestimated.

X-quoting from Telecom thread.

Have you noticed that there is a systamatic way of projecting growth in PRC. For almost all indicators there is
sudden jump in certain period to show huge growth. In the 90s I was talking to one of my chinese classmate and what she said makes sense now. She said the govt was buying all the computer at that time to show huge demand and keeping the computers in storage without using it. She said most of the products are showing this kind of demand. I was not aware of the global implications of such a demand that time.
PRC got lot of investment and trade after min 90s. But the consumer data and energy data do not show that kind of growth for the last 15 years. This is part of the strategic plan using media and fake demand to increase the profile of PRC gdp.

Definitely agree with you. There's no market chaos in any of the Chini data. It looks like some one decided that the graph must go in a particular direction and it does.

Internet users per 100 people

Notice how the graph climbs up nicely at 2001 and 2006.

May be this is the reason why Google was having low market share ? To save ba(i)du's* face ?

(* badu = popular swear in TN )

[Abhijeet]

China's middle class pop is said to be between 150-200M (its mandate from heaven, believe). So clearly there must be an overlap between the middle class & factory abduls. What I find hard to believe is that the factory abduls, after slogging out 14hrs a day/6 days a week, find time for the internet.

Where are you getting this 150-200M figure from? Is that middle class by Western standards or middle class by developing country standards (which is quite sufficient to afford Internet access)?

Are the revenue figures of all the (several) major, publicly traded Chinese Internet companies faked? Are the revenues of the entire Chinese online game industry (the second largest in the world, after South Korea) an illusion?

You need to do more than just say "this looks suspicious". What is suspicious - just the velocity of change? At various times, there are disproportionate shifts in the consumption of certain goods and services, because a large section of the population begins to be able to afford those items at around the same time. What makes you think that China has not reached that point for Internet access?

Provide your own rebuttal in factual terms if you have them. Simply pointing to something as "suspicious" - which others on this forum are only too eager to agree with - is just laziness.

[Carl_T]

I don't think a middle class of 200M for a nation of 1,300 M is unreasonable at all. Why does it sound fishy? I wouldn't be surprised if we have a 200M middle class, and China is more developed.

[Hari Seldon]

^^I too think its a good thing that cheena's middle class is in the 100s of millions. And their net surfer figures are not all that fanciful given their size and all.

It's a hopeful sign that perhaps yindia too can aspire for a decent fraction of the cheeni level of service delivery and administrative efficiency. A live example is a powerful thing.

A yindia-cheena pi$$ing contest where yindia inevitably takes a mauling is a good thing in that it serves to keep desis on their toes, besides. Let the comparisons and the heady numbers continue, I say!

[Hari Seldon]

China May Announce 4 Trillion Yuan Stimulus.
*Another* multi-trillion yuan stimuloose? wow. Re-wow.

China will announce in August a new stimulus package of possibly 4 trillion yuan ($586 billion), the China Business newspaper reported on its Web site, citing unidentified sources.

The plan, from China’s National Development and Reform Commission, will likely cover nine industries including information technology and new energy, the report said.

Cheen is taking quite seriously its newfound conviction that it must shift to a consumption based ekhanomy or at least address the fundamental imbalance it faces as of now. The easing of rules re the 1-child policy also adds weight to this argument. Good, I say!

But it does get me wondering why so much stimulose is needed in the 1st place? Wasn't the recovery strong or at least significant to start with? And who pays the tab for all this stimulus party??

Mish avers:

China has the biggest property bubble in the world. Another massive stimulus would fuel that bubble. In turn, increased demand for commodities would further stimulate the property bubbles in Canada and Australia.

If the recovery was genuine, we would not need to see round after round after round of global "stimulus" none of which has created any jobs. Indeed, all this stimulus has done is push up the price of financial assets and commodities everywhere, while fueling property bubbles in Asia and the commodity producing countries.

The one thing Bernanke has wanted but not gotten is stabilization in the US housing market.

The thing about stimulus plans is governments can throw money at problems, but they do not really get to decide exactly where the money goes in the global economy.

The US wanted housing and jobs, it got increases in equities, commodity prices, and gold instead.

China being a command economy can do a bit better at throwing money where it wants, but China cannot control the resultant property bubbles in Canada or Australia.

The net effect of all this stimulus was to create renewed speculation in financial assets and equities with the real economy sucking the gas of blowhards talking nonsense about the nascent recovery.

Well, time will tell, I reckon. Until then its one POV against another only. Let's wait and see which way this goes.

Jai hu, MaoA!

[wlin]

I do not know which business newpaper he is talking about it. I can not find such news in major media. It may be someone post it in the fourm or blog to try do his share of pop up estate price and as a by-product fool the bloomberg. Western media got no clue on how China works.

"the biggest property bubble in the world". That is great title.

China May Announce 4 Trillion Yuan Stimulus.
*Another* multi-trillion yuan stimuloose? wow. Re-wow.

China will announce in August a new stimulus package of possibly 4 trillion yuan ($586 billion), the China Business newspaper reported on its Web site, citing unidentified sources.

The plan, from China’s National Development and Reform Commission, will likely cover nine industries including information technology and new energy, the report said.

Cheen is taking quite seriously its newfound conviction that it must shift to a consumption based ekhanomy or at least address the fundamental imbalance it faces as of now. The easing of rules re the 1-child policy also adds weight to this argument. Good, I say!

But it does get me wondering why so much stimulose is needed in the 1st place? Wasn't the recovery strong or at least significant to start with? And who pays the tab for all this stimulus party??

Mish avers:

China has the biggest property bubble in the world. Another massive stimulus would fuel that bubble. In turn, increased demand for commodities would further stimulate the property bubbles in Canada and Australia.

If the recovery was genuine, we would not need to see round after round after round of global "stimulus" none of which has created any jobs. Indeed, all this stimulus has done is push up the price of financial assets and commodities everywhere, while fueling property bubbles in Asia and the commodity producing countries.

The one thing Bernanke has wanted but not gotten is stabilization in the US housing market.

The thing about stimulus plans is governments can throw money at problems, but they do not really get to decide exactly where the money goes in the global economy.

The US wanted housing and jobs, it got increases in equities, commodity prices, and gold instead.

China being a command economy can do a bit better at throwing money where it wants, but China cannot control the resultant property bubbles in Canada or Australia.

The net effect of all this stimulus was to create renewed speculation in financial assets and equities with the real economy sucking the gas of blowhards talking nonsense about the nascent recovery.

Well, time will tell, I reckon. Until then its one POV against another only. Let's wait and see which way this goes.

Jai hu, MaoA!

[Raghav K]

This is the Blue Jean Capital of the world in China. The pictures tell a story of a typical manufacturing in China. Warning..viewer discretion is advised.

http://www.photoshelter.com/c/justinjin ... _uVDyrd55k

[wlin]

The totally new design CRH380 display now in Shanghai expo. It will be used on the only offical high speed rail -- Shanghai-Beijing high speed rail next year. The highest speed of CRH380 will be 500 kilometer/hour. The average operating speed of Shanghai-Beijing will be at least 380 km/hour. But source said it will 420 km/hour. The issue for Railway Ministry now is the vehicle manufacturing speed fall far behind the demand.

[derkonig]

^^^^
Those high speed trains in china have just one destination: the museum, to teach the future generations of what not to do.
High speed rail link shutsdown in China

[Carl_T]

This is the Blue Jean Capital of the world in China. The pictures tell a story of a typical manufacturing in China. Warning..viewer discretion is advised.

http://www.photoshelter.com/c/justinjin ... _uVDyrd55k

Why so? Just want to know what it is before I watch it lol.

[wlin]

One of my friend in Shanghai bought one BYD F3DM from ShenZhen. F3DM started sales on March 29th and somehow I totally missed this news. With full battery it can run 60 kilometers which is enough for city commute. The price tag is 169,800 RMB which 25K USD. The demand is huge. People from Beijing, Shanghai fly to ShenZhen to buy the car. So the price may rise soon.

F6DM schedule to launched in US next year. The range said to be 200 kilometers. Personally I am not BYD fan and will not buy its car in the future because we are suppliers of its competitor but applaud to its performance and execution. Really impressive.


Panel：The right panel shows car in hybrid mode. The green lines show charging battery now.


Panel shows in battery mode


Other panels


Engine


Solar roof panel good for marketing to silly green idiot.


Outside, yes, you are correct. It look too familiar like …

[wlin]

You are late. Someone posted it already and I explain it on my post 15 Apr 2010 14:03. The bottom line is
1, it is EMU not high speed rail. Beijing-FuZhou High speed rail is under construction and will complete 2013.
2, it offers no competitive advantage against airline right now but thing will change once high speed rail complete.
3, The most important reason is because Railway Ministry now lacks vehicle. So it need to stop some EMU service and transfer those vehicles to other line. For example EMU line from Shanghai to Xiamen opened this month and Railway Ministry needs to close another EMU service from Qingdao to Wuhan (Another "high speed rail closedc" ) to transer the vehicle to use in Shanghai-Xiamen

^^^^
Those high speed trains in china have just one destination: the museum, to teach the future generations of what not to do.
High speed rail link shutsdown in China

[Raghav K]

^^^^^wlin..we do appreciate that China is more advanced than USA.i hope this should make you sleep better at nights. but please do not display that on forums with huge pictures ..and post only links

^^^derkonig.. i remember seeing similar train pictures in front of VT museum in Bengaluru..makes sense..