Transportation in China in the 1990s

Aims to provide an outline of current transportation conditions to prepare companies considering entry to the Chinese market for the realities they will inevitably confront there. The transportation sector has not kept up with Chinas rapid economic growth. Transportation has become a major bottleneck to further development of foreign business operations in China. As reforms have freed the economy, more goods are being shipped for longer distances. Railways, highways and shipping are now swamped beyond their capacity. In addition to inadequate infrastructure, transport companies, mostly state owned, operate inefficiently under near monopolistic conditions. Bureaucratic inefficiency and corruption make the movement of products even more difficult. Within the last year, Beijing has finally begun to take problems in the transport sector seriously, but it will likely be decades before transport operations in China run smoothly.