The following year, China upped the ante again, kicking off a
   multibillion dollar high-speed rail revolution designed to demonstrate
   the Communist party’s scientific – and political – might.

   Since that pre-Olympic push began, China has built the world’s longest
   and fastest high-speed rail routes, using sleek white bullet trains to
   slash the distances between mega-cities including Beijing, Shanghai and
   Guangzhou.

   In just over seven years, about 11,800 miles (19,000km) of high-speed
   track – about 55% of the global total – has been laid. “What the world
   did in half-a-century, we have done in 10 years,” said Zhao Jian, a
--
   Read more

   China’s high-speed lines were initially concentrated along the wealthy
   eastern coast but increasingly the revolution is sprinting westwards
   into the deserts and mountains that surround the old Silk Road, at
--

   Beijing’s railways are also going global with countries including the
   US, Thailand, Indonesia and the UK poised to build high-speed rail
   projects with differing levels of Chinese involvement.

--

   The furious pace of the expansion has raised red flags, including
   misgivings over safety in the wake of a deadly 2011 high-speed rail
   crash near the city of Wenzhou. The disaster, which claimed 40 lives,
   exposed a web of corruption at the heart of the country’s railways
--
   Wasserman/The Guardian

   Zhao, a long-term critic of China’s high-speed push, said there were
   also doubts over the financial viability of many projects. Building
   such connections between major cities such as Beijing or Shanghai made
--
   floors make a profit and the rest suffer serious losses,” he said.

   Wang, who has photographed seven of China’s eight key high-speed
   “arteries”, describes high-speed rail as a “great invention” that had
   profoundly changed the lives of millions of Chinese citizens.

--
   Road trading hub in China’s far west, Mohe, at the country’s
   northernmost tip, and to the balmy island of Hainan, which recently
   opened the world’s only high-speed rail “loop line”.

   “There are people who believe that travelling abroad is superior to