On a typical journey from Beijing to Boston, a traveller might fly a Boeing 777 on Hainan Airlines’ new direct service between the two cities and then take a German-built subway carriage on the Blue line from Logan Airport to Government Center. There, a family member might be waiting in a Volvo, a car that has long been popular with drivers in New England despite the Swedish carmaker’s larger travails.
Substitute a Comac C929 for the Boeing 777, a CNR Corp subway car for the Blue Line’s Siemens-made rolling stock and a Geely GC9 for the Volvo, and you have the Chinese government’s vision of a future in which long-distance travel features made-in-China planes, trains and automobiles.
Planes aside, that future could be coming sooner than many people realise. In October, CNR, one of China’s two largest rolling stock manufacturers, surprised the global rail industry by winning a $570m tender to supply more than 280 subway cars to Boston’s public transit system.