Japan and China are racing to build a new type of ultra-fast, levitating train, seeking to demonstrate their mastery over a technology with big export potential. Magnetic levitation, or maglev, trains use powerful magnets to glide along charged tracks at super fast speeds made possible by the lack of friction. A handful of short distance and experimental maglev trains are already in operation, but Asia’s two biggest economies are vying to develop what would be the world’s first long-distance intercity lines.
JR Central operates a 43-kilometer maglev test line in Yamanashi prefecture southwest of Tokyo.
Photographer: Noriko Hayashi/Bloomberg
If Japan and China are able to unveil their long-distance projects successfully by their due dates, it should give them a leg up when they look to export the next-generation technology, rail experts say. At stake is a share of the estimated more than $2 trillion global market for rail infrastructure projects.
“Maglev technology has huge export potential, and China and Japan’s domestic projects are like shop windows into how the technology could be successfully implemented abroad,” said Christopher Hood, a professor at Cardiff University who’s studied and written a book about Japan’s shinkansen.
Construction site of a medium-low-speed maglev railway in Qingyuan City, in China, earlier in September.
Japan, the creator of the world’s first bullet train, or shinkansen, has long been a top supplier to global fast-rail projects. Former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe targeted infrastructure exports including high-speed rail technologies as a key plank of economic growth.
But over the past decade, Chinese competitors, often willing to supply parts and know how for cheaper, have been catching up. In 2015, Japanese suppliers lost out to Chinese rivals in a bid to build Indonesia’s first high-speed railway from capital Jakarta to Bandung in West Java. Japan was eventually asked to rejoin the project after it began to face significant delays.