This article argues against the premise that the power and “deep pocket” of the Chinese state can overcome problems that the market cannot solve when left alone, but misses the forest for the trees. Obviously China doesn't attempt this category of infrastructure projects because they have to make immediate economic sense. They tackle them for political and long term geostrategic purposes. Some side benefits are that it's cheaper than US-style global military hegemony, far more permanent, and more readily accepted by populations. For example our local project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HKZMB cost USD$18.8B which is less than twelve days of the current US military budget of USD$1.65B per day, a lot cheaper and more acceptable than invading Hong Kong and effectively the crown jewel and literal gateway to one of the most populated areas and busiest shipping lanes on the planet. Plus bragging rights. See also impressive road and rail infrastructure through Yunnan, rail to Tibet and Southeast Asia, etc.
So, a continuation of the same "construction of the sake of the appearance of growth" phenomena that we saw with ghost cities?
I feel after this article, things will change.
Lets be clear. as far as I can see the article is only saying some routes are currently not working.
We know with the 'Ghost city' myth this doesn't mean this will stay the case.
We also should know on such a large project this should be expected.
Many of these new routes are amazing though. Do we need to list these off?
Sure, it might point out China needs to tighten up what it does, or it might just mean to efficiently run such a large project some parts will have growth issues as we go along.
China's government certainly deserves criticism, but I notice that there has been a big increase in posts critical of China on large forums such as Reddit and Hacker News in the last half-year or so, which leads me to suspect that some such posts may be astroturfed or inspired by astroturfing. The Hong Kong situation could explain some of it, but the increase I refer to began before the recent Hong Kong crisis.
This has been rumored for some time on various railfan groups across the web and I've always figured it to be true. In a few instances, people have called out that trains are moving too quickly up grades for their supposed load or are way underpowered for a train if all the containers were full. It's all been a bit suspect.
This has only fueled a lot of skepticism about the BRI. There's a few primary reasons for this:
1. Break of gauge: Any of the current routes require gauge changes between 5' and 4'8.5". Each time this occurs it incurs either (a) translating costs to move containers from railcar to railcar, or (b) bogie change costs. This both slows it down and adds significant labor expense to the endeavor which reduces competitiveness vs sea. Talgo (in Spain) makes gauge-changing bogies which theoretically can handle this, but they are not designed for the tonnage nor are they particularly well-suited to the extreme conditions found on the routes.
2. Axle Loading & Loading Gauge: The axle loads across the different networks are highly variable, requiring cars only be as heavy as the lightest network they travel on. In addition, the loading gauges are much tighter in Europe, resulting in only single containers of shorter length being allowed on COFC trains (Container on Flat Car)
This isn't to say the problems aren't surmountable, just that they have not yet been and it is going to be difficult to do so in the future.