Recently, China State Railway Group Co., Ltd. total liabilities finally exceeded the 6 trillion yuan mark. As of the first half of 2022, China Railway Group total liabilities were 6.00 trillion yuan. In the first half of 2022, the total revenue of China Railway Group was 4856.90 billion, a year-on-year decrease of 5.28%; a loss of 80.408 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 58.48%.
In addition, the most profitable Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway also suffered a loss for the first time, with a net profit of 1.028 billion yuan.
Many people are very curious. With a huge market of 1.4 billion people and a monopoly, why is China Railway still losing money? Could it be that 1.4 billion people cannot support China Railway? Many people are also worried that if China Railway continues to lose money like this, will it go bankrupt?
China's railways have public welfare attributes
In fact, this is not the case. Unlike other countries, China's national railways have a long-term monopoly on railway operating rights. However, in many people's minds, monopoly is inefficient and harmful to society. Fairly harmful.
Water supply, power supply, heating, gas supply, railway transportation, public transportation, etc. are natural monopoly industries , and the monopoly operations in these industries are reasonable. natural monopoly generally has the characteristics of public welfare, and its economies of scale effect is very obvious, that is, the larger the scale of the enterprise, the lower the production and operation costs.
If many companies compete in a natural monopoly industry, it will cause serious waste of resources. For example, in the same city, two sets of water supply or power supply networks cannot be laid; if railway transportation is "fragmented", either operating costs will increase significantly, or freight and fares will soar.
The railway industry is one of the most important basic livelihood industries for national development. China has always required China Railway Company 's first requirement is to protect the people's lives.
China's railway construction has been at a high level
What does it mean? That is, China wants all Chinese people to be able to take trains. Railways in counties and counties have always been the goal that China wants to achieve. To this end, China can be said to continue to challenge the miracles of the world, such as Dali Railway , starting from Dali City, Yunnan Province, It reaches Ruili City, Yunnan Province, a border city between China and Myanmar in the west, with a total length of 330 kilometers. It is the first railway in my country to cross the Hengduan Mountains. The total length of the 133 kilometers of tunnels in the Dabao section of the Dali-Ruili Railway reaches 103 kilometers, with bridges and tunnels accounting for 87%. It is called a "railway built underground". It is also difficult to construct because it crosses geologically active fault zones. It is huge, the geology is extremely complex and active, and the construction difficulty is rare at home and abroad. The construction lasted 14 years, and it is also known as "the most difficult railway to build."
In addition, there is also Sichuan-Tibet Railway , with an investment of 200 billion. It passes through the Hengduan Mountains, experienced "eight ups and downs", and has a cumulative climbing height of more than 14,000 meters. The Sichuan-Tibet Railway starts from Chengdu, Sichuan , passing through Pujiang , Ya'an , Kangding , Litang, Zuogong , Nyingchi , Shannan , and finally arrived at Lhasa, the capital of Tibet.
As of the end of 2018, the national railway operating mileage reached 131,000 kilometers, including 29,000 kilometers of high-speed railways; in 2021, the national railway operating mileage exceeded 150,000 kilometers, of which more than 40,000 kilometers of high-speed railways, an increase of 14.50% and 37.93% respectively.
Therefore, it can be said that China Railway has invested huge manpower and capital costs in the construction and maintenance of railways. At present, the main responsibility of National Railway is construction investment liabilities. The main reason for the increase in debt ratio in the first half of 2022 is that the railway is fixed in the first half of the year. Asset investment keeps running at a high level. What does
mean? The reason why National Railway has such high debt is because all the money was used to build the railway network. As a result, the total assets of National Railway are 8.99 trillion yuan.
Train ticket prices have not increased in 20 years
In addition, China’s railways are not for-profit, so tickets do not make money, and sometimes they even lose money. China’s train ticket prices have not increased in 20 years. This is because of railway pricing. The mechanism was promulgated in 1995, and the base price of passenger fares increased from 0. 03861 yuan/person-kilometer adjusted to 0. 05861 yuan/person-kilometer, and at the same time, the price comparison relationship between different seats has been appropriately adjusted. Since then, there has been no systematic comprehensive adjustment for more than 20 years.
The same is true for high-speed rail. In China, at a speed of 200km/h, the base price of a first-class seat is about 0.37 yuan/km, and that of a second-class seat is about 0.30 yuan/km; at a speed of 300km/h, the base price of a first-class seat is about 0.37 yuan/km. It is about 0.74 yuan/km, and the base price for second-class seats is about 0.46 yuan/km.
The distance of American high-speed rail from New York to Boston is 2,340 kilometers. The high-speed rail takes about 3.5 hours (with many stops) and costs about 150 US dollars (approximately RMB 1,000 yuan).
The distance from Tokyo to Osaka in Japan is only nearly half of the distance from Beijing to Shanghai (500 kilometers), but the ticket price is 15,000 yen, which is about 1,000 yuan in RMB. Simply looking at the relationship between kilometers and fares, Its price is about four times that of China.
The average price per kilometer of British high-speed rail is 4.49 yuan; the average price per kilometer of German high-speed rail is 2.33 yuan. China's high-speed rail ticket prices are low in the world.
summary
This is also the reason why China Railway’s debt is as high as 6 trillion. Because of its public welfare nature, ticket prices are low, and the cost of train construction, maintenance and operation is high. In many places, train operating costs are already much higher than train fares. , plus China has always aimed at connecting counties and counties. The scale of my country's investment in railways remains high. When China Railways' own funds are insufficient, it can only borrow debts. Railway construction is a long-term project, which has also led to the continuous increase in the scale of railway debt. Also because of its natural monopoly nature, the National Railway is not for profit, and the funds are provided by the state, so the high-speed railway is unlikely to go bankrupt.
In addition, due to the impact of epidemic prevention and control, the national railway passenger volume has dropped from 1.774 billion passengers in the first half of 2019 to the current 787 million passengers (in the first half of 2022), a decrease of 55.64%. With an increase and a decrease, it is natural for the losses to be large and the debt to be high.
