Is the Xiongan New Area (雄安新区) finally the northern China equivalent of Shanghai and Guangdong’s mega-development areas? If you are looking at infrastructure development in that part of northern China, you might be tempted to conclude that it is indeed the case.
The project itself has been hugely controversial — critics have claimed that it’s basically trying to make something disproportionately colossal in a part of northern China that’s vastly underdeveloped. Optimists say that this could be the solution to finally solving Beijing’s almost never-ending growing pains.
I’m sure that both camps were there on board the first train to Xiongan, which departed from — anywhere else? — Platform 1 at Beijing West railway station on 27 December 2020. Unfortunately, we didn’t seem to be able to travel in the special train reserved for that very intercity line — however, it was nice to be back onboard an inaugural run — the first one for me since the Covid-19 pandemic; and, in my case, the first one where I bought my railway ticket using a Chinese Green Card, after being granted permanent residency earlier in the spring. What the standing I had in the rail community in China, it would only be a matter of time before the microphones and cameras from the media found me onboard the train…
Xiongan railway station at self was well-designed — probably “too” well-designed, and too colossal at that. Parts of the railway station actually did not look like a rail station at all, both to my delight — and also to my disappointment, as signage was missing in a lot of positions. There was also a lot of random mistranslations – “Net Car“ seem to be a poor replacement for “ridesharing”, for example. I was, however, pleasantly surprised that the departure gates were at the very same level as the entrance — in too many railway megahubs across China, you had to go up or down a level – but this no-nonsense design at Xiongan station really made it stand out.
Lots of Xiongan itself still very much remains a work in progress, so there was no way I could go into really “central” Xiongan for now. They are, however, planning it as a key hub station on a number of very important high-speed routes across China, including a new easterly route from Beijing to Hong Kong, planned also to extend to Macau, and to Taiwan — the latter, probably in the remote distant future.
In the meantime, if you wanted to go there today — you might have to take the plane. And of course, on the very same line is Daxing International Airport. You can get off there to connect to the world… that is, if they let you cross the border these days during the pandemic…