At global level, in the history of Railways, the last 2 decades belong to China. With American continent and Britain relegating their Railways to tertiary level after road and air since about middle of twentieth century, European Continent (France, Germany, Spain, Italy etc) had been spearheading all the technological developments since then along with a decent contribution from Asia (Japan).
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But since last two decades, China has invested heavily on railway expansion, modernisation, research and has come up as an important force to be reckoned at global level. Today China is...
more... planning to and is involved in getting nations interconnected by rail. So far Rlys were considered as source of national integration, China is in process of taking it a level higher, i.e global integration.
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Had China been a more sober and democratic country, it would have achieved greater success in its international efforts.
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Experts believe that railways have great potential of side by side on line marketing of several products during the journey time, concerted efforts are needed to implement the technology and take pro active approach for the marketing.