P RUEBAS REALIZADAS

Thanks in no small part to opposition from the Greens, the Transrapid magnetic-suspension railroad project failed in Germany.

Consequently, state-of-the-art German railroad technology enjoyed its world premiere as a commercial means of transportation not in its country of origin, but in China.⁴⁰

As early as 1934, a German by the name of Hermann Kemper patented the magnetic-suspension railroad. In the sixties, the companies of Ludwig Bölkow and Krauss-Maffei constructed prototypes and demonstrated that they were viable. Moreover, in 1971, the German Ministry of Transportation financed a study, which recommended the development of a high-speed railroad. Various interests, however, prevented any further development. Officially, because the German national railroad had incurred a considerable debt, the German national railroad board and the German Ministry of Transportation decided to concentrate

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on modernizing conventional railroads, and all further research into the magnetic-suspension railroad was left to the German Ministry of Research. Here, they focused their attention on the technical aspects, but did nothing to have the magnetic railroad included in any German or European transportation plans. Here, the Germans failed to use the kairos stratagem, “[Quick-wittedly] leading away the sheep.” They simply assumed that, because their technology was so advanced, it would be required sooner or later. This was obviously a

“strategic error.”⁴¹

By the time the Transrapid was finally ready, high-speed trains like the French TGV and Germany’s own ICE left it without a niche to fill. Things appeared more hopeful in 1994, when the German government decided to have a Transrapid route built between Hamburg and Berlin, only to go back on this decision in 2000. Many now predicted the demise of the Transrapid project.⁴²Thus, a means of transportation that had cost DM2 billion in taxpayers’ money, spent on research, seemed finally to have crashed and burned.

The Chinese saw this German misfortune as an opportunity, and they took it (exploitation-of-need stratagem 5). Like a deus ex machina, Zhu Rongji, the Chinese prime minister, appeared on the scene. In June 2000, while on a state visit to Germany, he traveled on the test track in Lathen/Emsland. The technology made a great impression on him, and things started moving quickly from then on. In November of the same year, after the Chinese had conducted a feasibility study, negotiations began in Shanghai. Negotiations about the price were not easy. In fact, the whole project already looked like failing (blind-alley stratagem 28: “Removing the ladder after [the opponent] has climbed onto the roof ”). But then the German government promised to provide some of the funds, a decidedly positive development.⁴³ On January 23, 2001, the city of Shanghai and Transrapid International signed a contract, committing them to building a 31.5-kilometer Transrapid track between Pudong Airport and downtown Shanghai. According to their contract, the Shanghai

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Transrapid would cost DM1.293 billion: The Chinese had managed to halve the Germans’ original asking price. They had achieved this, in part, by reducing the maximum permissible speed on the track from 505 to 430 kilometers per hour, thus undermining the German position (Zhu, p. 4) (incapacitation stratagem 19: “Removing the firewood from under the cauldron”). Furthermore, this was the first ever application of Transrapid technology worldwide, so Shanghai was suddenly the world leader in this field (Zhu, p. 4) (switch-position stratagem 18: “Catching the bandits by first catching the ringleader”). The train’s eight components were delivered from Germany, as were the track switches and the components of the long-stator linear motor. The track, however, was built by the Chinese themselves, where the system originally intended for the German track was installed. These developments briefly rekindled interest in building short-distance magnetic-suspension railroads in Germany, but this interest soon died away again.

During a test run while the Transrapid was under construction, the extension cords of one of the magnetic motors overheated, suffering minor damage that was repaired fairly soon.

ThyssenKrupp, one of the German firms, explained that a number of different factors had combined to cause minor damage in the cord insulation, adding that there had been no safety risk, and that the track was still in good working order. In spite of this, 3 of the 18 freight cars originally ordered were canceled, and the Chinese started pressurizing Siemens and ThyssenKrupp, the two German contractors, into letting them produce more of the technology in China. They applied kairos stratagem 12, “[Quick-wittedly] leading away the sheep,” to take advantage of the faults in the German system. In the fall of 2003, Wu Xiangming, the project leader of the Shanghai Maglev Transportation Development Company, personally urged the head of Siemens, Heinrich von Pierer, to transfer German technology to China, including “essential patents that their German partners were understandably reluctant to hand over.”⁴⁴ Here, the Chinese were

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preparing to apply stratagem 19, “Removing the firewood from under the cauldron.” “The Chinese are forcing the Germans to get moving: unless the Transrapid is produced in China, they can see no prospect of any subsequent contracts.”⁴⁵ (Here, they applied stratagem 17, “Tossing out a brick to attract jade”: it was not clear what “subsequent contracts” they had in mind.) The Chinese justified the technology transfer on a number of grounds. They pointed out that they had first built their own magnetic railroad prototypes in the eighties, and that these could be developed further with German technology. The track system, which the Chinese had built using know-how bought in from a German company, had already undergone eight Chinese-patented improvements. These improvements solved problems of temperature fluctuation, movement of the concrete, and of the muddy ground in Shanghai.

The German contractors could guarantee that the system would work only as long as its reinforced concrete supports had no more than a tenth of a millimeter of tolerance. This degree of precision would be expensive, while, on the next sections of the track, costs—

roughly €10 million per kilometer—were due to be cut by 50%. In response to this, about 100 engineers at the Maglev Research and Development Center, under the leadership of Fan Mo, were already working on an adapted “flexibility system” that would allow greater tolerance. This was a creeping application of hollowing-out stratagem 25, “Stealing the beams and replacing the pillars [on the inside, while leaving the facade of the house unchanged].”

Finally, the Chinese argued that the Transrapid’s core technology had not moved on since the eighties. The Germans should now learn from the Chinese in Shanghai that new electronic developments should be more systematically applied to the system’s electronic configuration. To put it mildly, the Chinese said, energy conservation on board the train itself was less than ideal, the air conditioning was suitable only for the German climate, and the interior design, seats, and noise levels left something to be desired.⁴⁶

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The Chinese already owned the track in Shanghai, which they had bought from the Germans and developed further. When the Germans visited the construction site, after a thorough inspection, they had frankly to admit that, “although Germany still had the best magnetic-suspension train technology, China was now the home of magnetic-suspension railroad-track technology” (Zhu, p. 4). This was due, in part, to an application of stratagem 19, “Removing the firewood from under the cauldron.” “We must get used to the idea that the Chinese could apply for the contract to build the track in Germany,” said Horst Fechner, director of BMG, the company responsible for the planned magnetic railroad track between Munich Airport and downtown Munich. Certainly, the Chinese would be the least expensive applicants, and the most experienced. The Germans are likely to suffer a similar fate when it comes to building the trains (incapacitation stratagem 19). Although ThyssenKrupp is still building trains in Kassel, it is only a matter of time before the Chinese scrutinize the German trains, “copy their technology and develop it further. In future, the Germans will only be partial suppliers of their own high-tech invention—and they will not even be using components produced in Germany. Even now, the Shanghai suspension railroad firm SMTDC gives lectures to prospective contractors about the future of the Transrapid, and the Germans do not even get a mention.”⁴⁷

When the first commercial Transrapid train made its maiden journey, the German celebrations were euphoric. They did not seem to realize that, really, they had “nothing to celebrate” at all.⁴⁸

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