China’s high-speed railway (HSR) is the most recent poster child for the country’s rapid development, with more HSR tracks than the rest of the world combined. Since 2004, the Chinese government has invested more than 10 trillion RMB to build a 40,000-kilometer (km) network of trains that zip between stations at speeds reaching 350 km/hr (or 220 miles per hour). Not to be outdone, by 2035 the government aims to expand this train network by 75 percent to help the country reach its transport connectivity and low-carbon transportation goals. 

Yet this breakneck growth hides the fact that China’s HSR program has been fraught with delays and roadblocks. For instance, the Chinese government launched the construction of the Beijing-Harbin HSR in 2009. Most of the tracks for this  project were completed on schedule, but a segment going through dense residential areas between Beijing and Shenyang was significantly delayed. Local residents worried that the bullet trains would cause noise pollution, so they began firing off letters of complaint to China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP)—now called the Ministry of Ecology and Environment. The ministry responded to these objections by rejecting the environmental impact assessment (EIA) report for this section of the railway. Local governments were subsequently forced to resubmit the EIA report several times before getting the final MEP approval. Construction was delayed five years, raising the cost of construction by 50 billion RMB (or $7 billion dollars).

The Beijing-Harbin HSR project defies the commonly held perceptions that China’s central government has an iron grip on the country’s major infrastructure development. Bottom-up lobbying can shape the implementation in many ways, including local officials whose “In My Backyard” (IMBY) stance seeks to secure investments in their region. Yet also, and strikingly so, savvy citizens with their own IMBY concerns can hit the brakes on trains and other projects by tapping into the increasing power wielded by environmental regulators. 

Fragmented Bureaucracy

My new book, Localized Bargaining, delves into the political dynamics behind China’s high-speed railways. It is a common misperception that mega-projects like the high-speed railways are the product of top-down command of China’s monolithic party-state. In years of interviews with officials and citizens along this expanding network of railways, I uncovered the fragmentation and bottom-up bargaining power of local governments, who have played an important role in shaping the regional distribution of railway investment. 

The Chinese political system is actually highly decentralized. Local governments (e.g., provinces, cities, and counties) take the initiative in deciding what projects to pursue in their jurisdictions. The central government usually does not interfere in local economic activities, but will step in to regulate (and possibly halt) local projects involving a particularly large amount of investment or spanning across several provinces.

High-speed railways belong to the category of mega-projects in which the central government acts as a gatekeeper. Within the central government, however, there is no unified agency responsible for managing HSR projects. The power to approve and oversee a new railway project is divided across a number of key ministries. The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) evaluates the overall economic costs and benefits of the project, while the Ministry of Transport evaluates whether the railway complements existing transportation infrastructure. The Ministry of Natural Resources determines the amount of land to requisition for the project. And as we have seen, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment now takes on a role of growing importance in evaluating the environmental impact of the railways. 

These ministries have different interests and do not always agree with each other. As the above case demonstrates, it also means that not every agency succeeds in imposing its priorities. Changing the parameters of railway construction to reduce the noise of trains on a section of the Beijing-Harbin project increased the amount of total investment—an outcome likely frowned upon by the NDRC.

Environmental Regulators Flex Muscles

To attract new railways to their cities, local governments must first coordinate consensus within this fragmented central bureaucracy. They pull all kinds of strings to achieve this goal. Some send their leaders as emissaries to lobby the ministries; some mobilize informal connections to get ahead in the competition with nearby localities for railway stations. Most Chinese localities have established permanent offices in Beijing, known as the “Beijing Office,” to facilitate such activities.

The Beijing-Harbin high-speed railway kerfuffle revealed that an objection by a single ministry can effectively delay or even kill a project approved by many ministries. This power makes the environmental bureaucracy, a traditionally weak department, a “veto player” in the high-speed railway build-out, and also empowers the Ministry of Ecology and Environment in realms beyond environmental issues.

Local governments eager to pursue these large infrastructure projects must also now pay attention to the priorities of environmental regulators. In the process of doing research on high-speed railways, I gained access to the 920-page EIA report of a railway project submitted by a local government to the environmental ministry. That voluminous report did a thorough survey on how the construction of the railway might affect the environment along the route and proposed the redress for localities to minimize the impact. The details and care local governments put into this report showed they were treating it seriously.

China’s environmental regulators have never been as influential as they are today. Their rise is partly attributable to the Chinese leadership’s new focus on environmental issues, especially since President Xi Jinping made environmental protection one of his signature policies. In some cases, a few local officials who disregarded environmental protection regulations were punished or even removed from their offices. Yet I also believe that the prominence of environmental issues also comes from something inherent in the Chinese government structure, which allows the environmental bureaucracy to extend its influence beyond its regulatory purview—and promote more information transparency and accountability.