Making the Trains Run.(public works in China)(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)

Dams are not the only massive infrastructure projects beloved by Beijing. China's leadership has hatched several grand schemes: a pipeline to move fresh water from southern China to the north, the highest railway in the world--to Tibet, a plan to ship 100,000 people from an arid wasteland to the Yellow River. Partly this reflects the impatience of a nation barreling toward the developed world.

But another part may have to do with who's ordering up these boondoggles: six of the seven members of the Politburo standing committee--the most powerful people in the country--were trained as engineers. These include President Jiang Zemin and his handpicked successor, Hu Jintao, as well as reformist Prime Minister Zhu Rongji and his conservative predecessor Li Peng. If Mao's lieutenants strove to "bombard the headquarters," this new breed aspires to build the joint. "Their emphasis is on making things operational," says Italian economist Fiorella Kostoris Padoa Schioppa. "The question being asked is not why, but rather how."

The leadership's "edifice complex" may be only natural for a nation that prides itself on having built the Great Wall. But the philosophy is ill suited to many problems facing modern China. ...