Riding the slow train in China
Talking to migrant workers heading home for lunar new year
For officials in Xi Jinping’s China, making trains run on time is more than a figure of speech. As Mr Xi enters his second decade as supreme leader, his sternly paternalist version of Communist Party rule seeks to draw ever more legitimacy from the provision of customer-friendly public services, supplied via modern infrastructure. In the case of China’s railways, at least, that promise of order and efficiency has been kept.
This article appeared in the China section of the print edition under the headline “Riding the slow train in China”
From the January 21st 2023 edition
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