Railway investment rose only 2.1% in the first nine months, as against a 9.5% GDP increase over the period, the State Council Development Research Centre said in a comment on systemic bottlenecks. Between January and September, China's rail network handled 1.61 billion tonnes of cargo, up 9% year on year, but that throughput fell two thirds short of demand, state media reported separately. The disconnect is blamed on delays in coal shipments to power generating plants which were forced to schedule brown-outs over the summer. Beijing is committed to adding 27,000km of track by 2020, raising China's total to 100,000km, but investments appear to be well short of the RMB100bn (US$12.04bn) required to meet that target.
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