The removal last week of China’s Ministry of Railways, Liu Zhijun, due to an investigation of possible corruption, has prompted some commentators to predict a slowdown in the country’s fast-expanding high-speed railway construction programme.

The Global Times, citing a report from the National Audit Office, said that the ministry was Rmb1,300bn in debt in 2009, of which nearly two-thirds was short-term debt. The paper quoted Zhao Jian, a researcher at Beijing Jiaotong University, as saying that the interest on this debt may have become too large for the government to afford.

China’s high-speed rail network stretched 7,531km as of last November and is set to expand to 16,000km by 2020. However, a senior Beijing-based executive for a foreign high-speed train producer said it was unclear whether sufficient demand exists to justify this investment. He said that on many high-speed rail routes, such as the one linking the Guangzhou and Wuhan, some trains run “nearly empty” because of high ticket prices. A single journey on the high-speed Wuhan-Guangzhou line currently costs Rmb469, about the same price as an airline ticket booked a week in advance and twice as much as a ‘soft sleeper’ ticket on regular-speed trains .