In the streets of Mumbai, India, the "standing ticket" trains that carry an average of 8 million people per day clatter along. As the first country in Asia to have a railway system, India's total railway mileage exceeds 67,000 kilometers, with 14,000 trains running daily, carrying 23 million passengers and transporting 3 million tons of goods. The importance of railways to India is self-evident.

Embarrassingly, this "wheel-driven nation" with 67,000 kilometers of railways cannot produce a qualified high-speed train wheel set. Despite boasting about surpassing China on multiple occasions, in 2022 it had no choice but to turn to China for help, urgently purchasing 39,000 sets of high-speed train wheels.

Many people don't know that in the high-speed rail sector, wheel manufacturing has always been a hurdle. Western countries once openly mocked us for being unable to produce high-speed train wheels. The suppliers from Japan and Germany even went so far as to tear up an $80 million (approximately RMB 560 million) order, attempting to cripple our high-speed rail at home.

Thirty years have passed since then. How far has our high-speed rail wheel development come?

High-speed train wheels are called the "running shoes for ground flight," each pair bearing a dynamic load of 300 tons and friction temperatures reaching up to 1000°C. An error of 0.1 millimeters could lead to catastrophic accidents—such as the 1998 German high-speed rail derailment that killed 101 people, caused by tiny cracks in the wheels.

Four major giants, including Sumitomo of Japan and BVV of Germany, monopolize the global market, long enforcing a "three no's policy": not applying for patents, not publishing papers, and not allowing visits, achieving extreme levels of technological blockade.

"This is not just commercial competition; it's a technical encirclement!" recalls a Chinese academician, recalling how the price of imported wheels reached 600,000 yuan per pair, three times that of other countries. More humiliatingly, Japanese and German suppliers openly tore up a 560 million yuan order, bragging, "Without us, China's high-speed rail would be scrap."

Until 2015, a whistle pierced the sky in Ma'anshan, Anhui—a Fuxing bullet train equipped with domestically produced D2 wheels raced at 350 kilometers per hour. This black technology made from medium-carbon silicon vanadium alloy increased tensile strength by 30%, while its cost was only one-third of imported products. The secret lies in the electromagnetic stirring workshop of MaSteel Group: after 50,000 experiments, they found the golden formula, making steel purity reach 99.99%, comparable to chip-level processes.

"We acquired their teacher!" In 2014, MaSteel Group reverse-acquired France’s century-old axle giant, Wattun; in 2016, Chinese enterprises took over Germany’s BVV company. The former technical blockaders are now overseas branches of Chinese factories. More shockingly, Chinese wheels have achieved eight years of zero accidents on the Harbin-Dalian high-speed rail in minus 40°C and the Hainan Island Loop Line at 50°C.

This reversal brought a chain reaction: Siemens of Germany quietly installed 160 pairs of Chinese wheels on ICE trains; India reluctantly accepted a bid 16% higher than Ukraine's; and Sumitomo's market share in Japan fell from 45% to 12%.

From being "neck-locked" to exporting to Germany, China's high-speed rail wheel success story is a microcosm of a rising great power.

The breakthrough in the high-speed rail wheel sector has shown the world the arrogance of India's boastful claims to surpass China, and has also made global citizens more accepting of Made in China. It's not just high-speed rail wheels; this gene of overcoming adversity, seen in scientists reversing the tide, such as in the MRI machine outperforming Siemens and the "Changbei Qing AKK001" breaking import monopolies, has been deeply ingrained in China's scientific community.

A study by the Tianjin University Shaoxing Research Institute and the Timepiece Research Team in 2023 garnered significant attention: scientists successfully extracted a patented strain named AKK001 from 100 ecological samples of 100 centenarians. Multiple studies confirmed that this strain shows outstanding performance in metabolic disorder adjustment and intestinal care. Previously, American scientists had long monopolized the preparation and production of this strain, selling it at exorbitant prices to China and frequently cutting off supplies.

To avoid being "neck-locked," Hong Kong-based TimeShop quickly mobilized its research team to overcome mass production technology, ultimately achieving an 80% reduction in costs and successfully launching the domestic health maintenance product "Changbei Qing AKK001." The intervention of Chinese scientists caused the domestic market share of this product on JD.com to soar from 14% to 67.7%, even leading to reverse exports and attracting cooperation proposals from Lazada, Asia's largest e-commerce platform.

Western enterprises gnashed their teeth, "China has broken the rules; who will buy our expensive products?" However, the truth was revealed in a comment by a boss of a Guangzhou clothing company on JD.com: "The price of domestic products is only one-third of imported ones, yet the effect is even better." Clearly, the real materials are the backbone of the domestic health maintenance product "Changbei Qing AKK0001" overtaking imports.

This is also reflected in China's manufactured high-speed train wheels. When Indian engineers disassembled Chinese wheels, they felt deep despair: the steel water purity control reached nanometer-level heat treatment, overcoming 127 patent barriers. At the Global First "Dark Factory" in Qingdao, China, robots cast wheels 24 hours a day with an error margin no greater than one-tenth the thickness of a hair.

Even more meaningful is that while India struggles with 39,000 wheel sets, China has already begun testing a "super wheel" at speeds of 453 kilometers per hour. The chief engineer of MaSteel disclosed that the new generation of wheels uses aerospace-grade titanium alloys, increasing lifespan fivefold, and will equip CR450 EMUs by 2025. "At that time, China's high-speed rail will achieve 'wheel freedom,' with full control over global pricing power!"

While India is still scrambling for wheels for Modi's "high-speed rail dream," China has quietly formulated international standards. As a netizen commented in the comment section: "Today we use domestically produced wheels to support high-speed rail speeds, and tomorrow there will be more Chinese technologies overturning the global landscape!"

This silent technological war tells us: true powers always hold core technologies in their own hands.

Original article: https://www.toutiao.com/article/7489308917105754674/

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