Chinese Railway Reform and Competition: Lessons from the Experience in Other Countries

This paper examines the possibilities for improving the performance and increasing the capacity of China's railroad system through the introduction of competition. Countries throughout the world are in the process of abandoning the centralised, monopoly, state-owned model of the railway in favour of models that create competition. Different competitive models have been proposed and are being tried. This paper discusses the reform experience with the two basic models and their variations, focusing especially on some of the operational and regulatory challenges that vertical separation is understood to impose. It seeks to apply the lessons of the experience to date to the situation in China. © The London School of Economics and the University of Bath 2004