China’s High-Speed Rail Falling Apart: Without Japan-Germany Wheels, Rides Feel Terrifying

Traveling by rail in China today poses some unusual challenges. Passengers on a high-speed train traveling from Urumqi station to Lanzhou West noticed unusually severe shaking and recorded videos asking whether the situation was normal. Another passenger on a high-speed train from Xi'an to Chengdu posted on social media that more than half an hour had passed since she first felt the intense shaking, but the train continued to sway heavily for a long time. She said she was worried, adding that even turbulence on a plane would not last this long. Some people said the shaking was abnormal and felt the train was accelerating recklessly. However, the original poster said the train was not traveling at an especially high speed at the time, which was why the shaking seemed even more unusual. More passengers later uploaded videos saying the high-speed trains they were riding on also experienced severe shaking. Some said that after sitting for a while, they began to feel numbness in their lower bodies. Some industry insiders pointed out that although China's high-speed rail system claims to have an overall localization rate of more than 90 percent, key components such as high-speed axle bearings, wheels and specialized materials for trains operating above 87 miles per hour have long relied heavily on imports. They said domestic replacements have still failed to fully meet operational requirements. These two areas are cited as major weaknesses and potential safety risks. High-speed rail wheels are critical components that ensure both safety and speed. For trains reaching more than 186 miles per hour, the wheels are the only parts directly connecting the train to the tracks. To ensure safe high-speed operation, wheel manufacturing technology is considered a top priority. However, the technical requirements are extremely strict. Even a 0.2 millimeter error can create major safety risks. In 2024, Japan and Germany, two suppliers of high-speed rail wheels, announced that they would stop supplying China and canceled orders worth 80 million U.S. dollars. Some people familiar with China's high-speed rail industry have said that wheels require maintenance after traveling 746,000 miles and must be replaced after 1.5 million miles. They said Japan, France and Germany had previously stopped supplying manufacture and repair machinery to China. After Japan and Germany cut off supplies, China faced difficulties maintaining and replacing the wheels, and was forced to use domestically produced wheels originally intended for overseas belt and road projects. After switching to domestic wheels, train speeds were reduced, but shaking inside the carriages became noticeably worse. They said this shows that Chinese-made high-speed rail wheels still fall far short of required standards. Some people may ask, as the world's second-largest economy and a country capable of manufacturing spacecraft, why has China still been unable to produce high-quality high-speed rail wheels? Experts say that to successfully manufacture them, the first requirement is to ensure the quality of the steel used. Currently, the special carbon microalloy steel used for international wheels has an extremely high level of purity, with hydrogen content below two parts per million. It also contains very low levels of inclusions, which are evenly distributed. This type of steel is considered among the highest-grade material possible. However, China has yet to achieve a breakthrough in manufacturing this alloy. Second, this steel must undergo multiple rounds of heat treatment and cooling to reach the desired condition. This process is highly complex and precise, requiring specialized equipment and skilled technicians. Each wheel must also undergo strict inspections and testing to ensure it meets required standards. Because high-speed rail wheel manufacturing is extremely difficult, the production technology is classified as a strategic core technology, and countries keep it highly confidential. There are no patent applications, no academic publications, and no technical exchanges or factory visits. This makes the technology extremely difficult for outsiders to obtain. China's industrial espionage efforts have reportedly failed to successfully acquire this commercial know-how. As a result, the four major high-speed rail wheel manufacturers in Germany, Italy, France, and Japan have maintained a long-term dominance of the global market. As mentioned earlier, China's high-speed rail system faces another key weakness, high-end axle box bearings. There's a saying in the manufacturing industry, wherever something rotates, bearings are needed. As essential core components in mechanical equipment, bearings support rotating parts, reduce friction, and ensure rotational accuracy. Whether in aircraft, automobiles, high-speed trains, or precision machine tools and instruments, rotating components all rely on bearings for support. Despite being known as the world's factory, China currently produces large quantities of low-end bearings with excess capacity, but has little presence in the global high-end bearing market. In particular, for main bearings used in high-precision machinery, China still lacks key technologies. In important sectors such as high-speed rail, wind power, and medical equipment, China's high-end bearings rely mainly on imports. In 2025, China imported 3.45 billion U.S. dollars worth of bearings. Compared with previous years, this figure has shown no significant decline. Beijing Ruidou Lian, machinery equipment company, previously published an article saying that China can currently only produce ordinary bearings for speeds below 87 miles per hour, while bearings for high-speed trains operating above 155 miles per hour still rely on imports. According to the article, China needs to import about 1 billion dollars worth of high-speed rail bearings every year, accounting for more than 90 percent of the global bearings market. Deputy Secretary General of the China Bearing Industry Association Liu Xiaofang said that most high-speed rail bearings used in China are currently imported. CRH1 and CRH5 high-speed trains use bearings from Sweden's SKF, CRH2 trains use bearings from Japan's NTN and NSK, and CRH3 trains use bearings from Germany's FAG. Industry experts point out that high-speed rail bearings require their dimensional tolerances and shape tolerances to be controlled at the micron level. This would prevent severe vibration or deviation during operation. At the same time, they must achieve a reliability rate of more than 98 percent, with an actual service life reaching 8 to 30 times the calculated lifespan, ensuring that vehicles do not experience failures or damage during long-term operation. In addition, high-speed rail bearings must have strong wear resistance, corrosion resistance, heat resistance, and impact resistance to operate under different regional and climate conditions. These standards can only be met by imported bearings. Domestic bearings, however, have a reliability rate of only 96 percent, with an actual service life of just 2 to 5 times the calculated lifespan. This means that being usable and being high-performing are completely different concepts. This is why China's C919 passenger aircraft, the Y-20 transport aircraft, and high-speed rail systems all use imported bearings. Although China has nearly 10,000 companies producing bearings, high-end products account for only 5 percent, while mid- to low-end products make up more than 80 percent. China may be a major bearing producer, but it is still far from being a true manufacturing powerhouse. Regarding China's reliance on imported high-end bearings, Wang Dongsheng, executive deputy director of the Shandong Technology Transfer Center, said the biggest problem lies in the materials. He said without high-quality steel, it is impossible to produce high-end bearings. China's steel production has ranked first in the world for many years, yet it still cannot produce the highest-grade steel. Currently, almost all steel used for China's high-end bearings relies on imports. One important steel quality standard is its oxygen content. In steelmaking, oxygen levels are measured by parts per million. Generally speaking, steel with eight parts per million of oxygen is considered high-quality steel, while steel with five parts per million is considered top-grade steel, which is exactly what high-end bearings require. Bearing steel is known as the king of steels. To obtain high-end bearing steel technology, China brought in global bearing giants such as US-based Timken and Sweden's SFK to establish production bases in Yantai and Jinan, Shandong province. However, due to strict safeguards by these companies, high-end metallurgy remains a core technology that China has not been able to acquire. However, during the production process of US's Timken and Sweden's SKF, Chinese engineers learned the basic principle behind bearing steel production, adding rare-earth elements to remove oxygen from the steel. Although they understood the principle, they still lacked key data, such as the specific composition and ratios of rare-earth elements. They could only rely on their own testing. The testing process did not go smoothly. After adding rare-earth elements to steel, the performance became inconsistent, sometimes improving and sometimes deteriorating. During production, the process was also prone to clogging at the casting outlets. Despite years of research efforts, the technical bottleneck has not been overcome, and China still cannot produce qualified bearing steel. China's inability to produce high-end bearings is not only due to its failure to break through the manufacturing technology. Another important reason is the lack of equipment and tools required to process high-end bearings, advanced CNC machine tools. Industrial machine tools are known as the mother machines of industry. High-end CNC machine tools are among the most profitable and technologically advanced sectors. For a long time, China has remained dependent on others in the field of high-end CNC. In 2025, China's machine tool exports increased 18% year-on-year, allowing it to surpass Germany for the first time and rank globally with a 21.6% share of the international market. However, Chinese Academy of Sciences academician Jia Zhenyuan has said that China's high-end machine tools still face challenges in core technologies and reliability. The gap remains significant compared with international advanced levels, especially in areas such as long-term precision retention and the performance of key components. Some industry insiders said imported high-end machine tools can maintain precision stability for three to five years, while domestically produced equipment may perform adequately under unloaded laboratory conditions but can only maintain its performance for about six months under real operating conditions. Compared with imported high-end machine tools, domestic systems also experience occasional freezing and crashes during continuous heavy load operation. In terms of core components, about 70% of high-end CNC systems in China's domestic market are still in a loss of control. Wang Xiaolong, chairman of Yigong Robotics Yinchuan Company, said that China remains highly dependent on imports for key functional components, such as high-end CNC systems, precision bearings, and high-performance ball screws and guide rails. The supply cycle for critical components used in advanced machine tools, including five-axis machining systems, is long, and China lacks pricing power. It can be seen that the core components of China's high-speed rail system—wheels, bearings, related raw materials, and processing equipment—cannot be currently produced independently, and there are no clear signs of a breakthrough. Some people may ask, why did Japan and Germany cut off supplies of high-speed rail wheels to China? First, let's look at how a China expert described the situation. Germany, France, and Japan all had high-speed rail technology. China told Germany, if you come, we will order 1,000 trains from you. But there is one condition. You must transfer the technology. Germany said no. Then China went to France and offered the same deal—1,000 train orders. France said it would think about it. Then China went to Japan's Shinkansen system. Japan's technology was from 1984, and Japan agreed. In the end, Japan won the order. Germany and France could not sit still. They said, if Japan can give you the technology, we can give it to you too. Eventually, China Railway Rolling Stock Corporation, CRRC, became a combination of German, French, and Japanese technology. He also claimed that this allowed China to save nearly 100 years of research and development time. He said Chinese engineers had lower wages than their foreign counterparts, allowing China to manufacture train carriages at much lower costs. He even claimed that Germany later ordered trains from China because of the lower prices. However, the issue is that China agreed to purchase 1,000 trains in exchange for technology transfer, but failed to fulfill the promised order volume. Instead, after purchasing only a small number of locomotives, it began reverse engineering them. The technology transfer agreements signed with Japanese and German companies did not authorize China to independently produce the entire high-speed rail system because some key components could not be manufactured domestically. The technologies and production licenses transferred by Japan and Germany mainly covered areas such as train exteriors, motors, and onboard facilities, which China was already capable of producing itself. The high-speed rail equipment covered under these agreements was also intended for domestic upgrades and maintenance needs in China, not for China to use in international export competition. At the same time, the high-speed rail bearings, wheels, and other components supplied under the agreements were provided based on the number of trains China agreed to purchase. After China violated the agreements first, Japan and Germany had no obligation to continue supplying key components. Apart from China's breach of agreements and patent infringement, another important reason why Japan and Germany stopped supplying high-speed rail wheels was that they did not want to bear responsibility if a major accident occurred on Chinese high-speed rail systems. Take Japan's Shinkansen as an example. Over more than half a century, Japan's bullet train system has achieved two major records. First, no passenger has died due to train-related accidents. Second, its punctuality is measured in seconds, with the average annual delay time of the Tokaido Shinkansen kept within 8 seconds. Why has Japan's Shinkansen achieved these records? One reason is that everything from their technology to operational management systems was independently developed by Japan and improved year after year. Decades of technological accumulation and a strong safety culture have made safety the top priority for the Shinkansen. Speed ranks third, while the second priority is balancing economic benefits. In 1997, before China had imported high-speed rail technology, Japan's Shinkansen 955 experimental train had already reached a speed of 275 miles per hour. Over more than half a century, Japan's Shinkansen speed increased from the initial 124 miles per hour to the current 199 miles per hour, an increase of about 75 miles per hour. More than 10 years after China imported high-speed rail technology, the Fuxing high-speed train reached 217 miles per hour. After the deadly Wenzhou rail accident in 2011, China announced that trains would operate at reduced speeds. However, in 2024, China announced the official operation of the standard Fuxing train, with speeds returning to 217 miles per hour, once again claiming to lead the world. China has promoted this as a key selling point for competing in the global high-speed rail market. However, Japan and Germany understand that China currently can only produce steel and wheels for trains below 87 miles per hour, while China's independently developed high-speed rail automatic controls still have major flaws. They believe China's current safe operating speed should remain below 124 miles per hour. If Japan and Germany continued supplying bearings, wheels and other key components and another major accident occurred, they feared China would shift the blame onto their companies. Therefore, to avoid being held responsible, cutting off supplies became the choice for Japanese and German companies. In the end, as key components reach the end of their service life, China's high-speed rail system is running slower and slower, and shaking more and more.