With the same force that powered the most ambitious rail programme in history, China has slammed the brakes on its investment in high-speed trains.
The sudden halt has led to system-wide whiplash, leaving workers without pay, battalions of heavy machinery sitting idle and setting back plans for bullet trains that were meant to carry the nation’s future.
In the farm fields of Bazhou, unfinished pillars and silent cement mixers stand along a gravel path that was designed to be a key link in the high-speed network connecting Tianjin with Baoding. It is now one of the dozens of large rail projects suspended after a crash in July left 40 people dead near the eastern city of Wenzhou. The crash revealed how China had cut corners in its haste to build the world’s biggest bullet train system.