The media office of the Shanghai municipal government has denied that the Shanghai-Hangzhou maglev rail line has been suspended. On the other hand it was not willing to give any information about the timetable for construction, which has yet to start, or if it would be completed in time for the 2010 Shanghai Expo.

If it is built, the line will stretch some 175 km and will carry trains running at speeds of up to 450 kph between the two cities.

The denial was something less than totally whole-hearted. An official from the Shanghai municipal reform and development commission said, ‘We know the National Development and Reform Commission approved a feasibility study on the Shanghai-Hangzhou maglev line in March last year, but that doesn’t mean the project will definitely be built.’

On Sunday, the Xinhua News Agency reported that the Shanghai government might shelve the construction of the line altogether. Xie Weida, a professor at the Institute of Railway & Urban Rail Transit at Tongji University, said China still lags a long way behind Germany in maglev-building technology.

He was quoted in the China Daily as saying, ‘If the maglev line is to be built, the major portions of the train will have to be imported from Germany. So far, we can only handle the construction of the rail and the train’s shell.’ Germany has said it does not want to invest in this project nor does it want to transfer key technology to China. The original report may well be true.
Source: China.org.cn