Taking China's measure by fast train

Development | Giles Chance

I am in the middle of the Chinese countryside, somewhere between Changsha and Wuhan, traveling north at 300 kilometers per hour on a G-train - the fastest high-speed EMU bullet train in China. The electric multiple unit train has self-propelled carriages.

I don't feel like I'm traveling very fast, because the ride is quite smooth, without the swaying you find on the French high-speed TGV ("Tres Grande Vitesse" or very high speed train), or the Eurostar, which runs at high speed from London to Paris under the English Channel. China's new high-speed train has obviously taken advantage of the massive technological improvements since the 1980s and 1990s, when the TGV and Eurostar were built.