China's huge spending on railroad construction - more than 3.7 trillion yuan (HK$4.2 trillion) over the next six years by some estimates - has stirred heated controversy.
Supporters say the massive expenditure is an important stimulus to China's economy and provides much-needed infrastructure for future growth.
Critics complain about the high costs of the railway projects, especially the high-speed rail system, which they claim are wasteful monuments to national vanity.
Even China Central Television admits that questions have been raised over the 116.6 billion yuan price tag of the recently launched Wuhan-Guangzhou high-speed rail. And the Hong Kong-Guangzhou high-speed rail, the Express Rail Link, expected to start service in 2016 will be the world's most expensive high-speed rail per kilometre at a total cost of more than HK$60 billion.
China's rail budget is enormous. A report by Nomura analysts Jiong Shao and Stephen Chow estimates the nation's railway infrastructure investments at 550 billion yuan last year, 700 billion yuan this year and three trillion yuan from next year to 2015. These include the government's plan for 18,000 kilometres of high-speed rail by 2020, which will account for most of the world's high-speed rail network.
To some experts, China's railway expansion bears similarities to Britain's during its industrial revolution in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Eric Hobsbawm, a British Marxist historian, describes in his 1968 book, Industry and Empire, how the world's first industrial revolution started in Britain in the 18th century and fuelled the rise of the British Empire.