Chinese Railway Transportation: Opportunity and Challenge

China’s Railway Transportation (CRT) is enjoying a time of unprecedented development thanks to huge government investment and a series of aggressive favorable policies. Understanding the opportunities and challenges facing the CRT affords the practitioners and policy makers a better perception of development regarding this important transportation mode. This paper attempts to comprehensively assess this industry using force field analysis, taking into consideration “driving forces” such as energy conservation, urgent social demands supplemented by a big market for container transportation due to a soaring economy, and the central government's policies that have supported corporate transformation in the past three decades. However, key “resisting forces” are likewise identified: fierce competition from other modes of transportation, especially from the road sector, a lagging financing strategy, a low profit rate, and strict government controls, all of which could lead to low productivity. After these factors are documented and analyzed, our study shows that the overall forces are deemed favorable for CRT development, although the resisting forces may create a very large impact since they also represent urgent issues, and thus need to be tackled accordingly.