How years of thin investment have stalled Germany’s rail network as China’s speeds ahead

Wang Xixi still remembers her first experience with Germany’s trains 21 years ago. It left her with a question: how could a railway be so empty, clean and punctual, and still make money? The carriages were bright, the toilets almost spotless and the fittings modern. During four years as a student in Bavaria, travelling on a regional rail pass, she barely remembers a delay. At the time, China’s high-speed railway network was just getting started, while Germany was a major exporter of the...