For longer lines with more than 100m passengers a year and travel times of five hours or less—such as the one between Beijing and Shanghai—the more expensive type may be justifiable.

It is less so for journeys between commuter towns, during which trains only briefly accelerate to top speeds. For longer journeys serving sparse populations—a description that fits many of the lines in western and northern China—high-speed rail is prohibitively expensive.

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But the network expansion now under way is even bolder than Mr Liu had envisaged. China has a four-by-four grid at present: four big north-south and east-west lines. Its new plan is to construct an eight-by-eight grid by 2035. The ultimate goal is to have 45,000km of high-speed track. Zhao Jian of Beijing Jiaotong University, who has long criticised the high-speed push, reckons that only 5,000km of this will be in areas with enough people to justify the cost. “With each new line, the losses will get bigger,” he says.

It appears to be the argument that the Economist is making. High Speed rail is a good technology that should be implemented, just not at the scale China implemented it at.