The Maglev Development and Commercial Application in China

The history of the passenger transportation of the whole mankind is a history of continuous increase of the operation speed. A very important achievement in the area for the 20th century is the appearance of the maglev train. China started the research and development on key technologies of maglev since late 1980's, a demonstration line in Pudong Shanghai was built and put into operation successfully with China-Germany Cooperation. A suggestion for construction of 170km long Shanghai-Hanzhou high–speed line was approved by the government, a program to promote the maglev transportation development both for long distance application and intercity and urban application is under discussion. The present paper described shortly the development and commercial application of maglev in China