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China economy
OpinionComment
David Dodwell
David Dodwell

How China’s rail network highlights the power of the old to shock

  • King’s College professor David Edgerton has argued that more breakthroughs have come in the form of adjustments to older technology than from new inventions
  • China’s development of its railway network, particularly high-speed rail, exemplifies this

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High-speed trains are parked for maintenance in Nanchang, the capital of east China’s Jiangxi province, in January 2019. Photo: Xinhua
David Dodwell
News of the ambitious development of China’s high-speed rail system, including the extension of the high-speed cargo network, had me thinking about Professor David Edgerton at King’s College, London, and his 2006 book The Shock of the Old.

Edgerton complains that we are too obsessed with innovation – the “new” – when in fact the great majority of significant breakthroughs have been clever tweaks of the old, generating wealth and enhancing productivity over the past half-century. Much-lauded new inventions may be significant, but they may be neither useful nor pervasive for generations, if ever.

Meanwhile, it is the useful but very old inventions that continue to stimulate most of the improvements in our lives. Think of trams, that still today unglamorously move millions across Hong Kong Island every month. Think of electric cars, which first burst onto the market in Des Moines, Iowa, back in 1890. Remember that the first mention of the “fourth industrial revolution” was back in the 1940s.

Edgerton suggests that a characteristic feature of our age has been imitation, not innovation. And nowhere is this better illustrated than by China’s “reinvention” of rail.

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How big is China's high-speed rail network?

How big is China's high-speed rail network?

Since the opening of the Beijing-Tianjin high-speed link in 2008, China Railways has built 141,000km of new railway lines, 36,000km of them high-speed lines that can whisk travellers around at 250km an hour. The aim is to add a further 60,000km of railway lines by 2035 – almost half of these high-speed lines. The 2035 plan says every city over 200,000 people should by then be linked up to the country’s rail network, and every city over 500,000 served by high-speed trains.

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