During the last month the ticket offices at both Hongqiao and Ning Hai keep changing the number of days to buy tickets. It used to be 7 days in advance, then 5 days in advance, then this Saturday the 17th went to 3 days. And there is a vast shortage of tickets of any sort.

Wednesday morning in Ning Hai we were told only late evening tickets were available for Friday travel and to come back Thursday morning and they may have better tickets. But on Tuesday afternoon they had a lot tickets, just could not sell them. We did have our local Chinese suppliers with us to help with the language so I am sure it is not just us mistaking the system.

We used to be able to get a stand up ticket to Ning Bo and then a ticket to Shanghai, but no more. Please help if there is something I am doing wrong. Thanks. Nola

Its pretty simple economics of supply and demand in
the context of windfall wealth.

Have you tried registering online and ordering from there (requires Chinese). I know you can do G and D tickets, not sure about the other trains though.

We cannot do online as we do not have the Chinese ID card. We have been here 2 years and this is the first really bad problems we have had with the trains.

Today our suppliers told us they have been told that they can only buy tickets on the day of travel.

What is sad is that our supplier is driving us to Shanghai as we cannot get tickets. And we all know that cost will be put into the program and if this continues China will no longer be considered the low cost country. At least I think it is sad, some may say who cares. I guess then we all move to the next country that is up and coming.

Travel within China was affordable, by air or train, when you can no longer budget for travel expenses it makes a huge impact on contract negotiations.

You don't need to have an ID card to buy train tickets online. A passport will suffice.

Just get someone who 1) reads Chinese, and 2) knows how to use a browser to do it for you.

Yes, China is following in the footsteps laid out by Japan in the 70s and Korea/Taiwan in the 80s. In order to remain competitive, it increasingly needs to innovate (e.g. Foxconn's new robots), make higher quality products (e.g. this is already a necessity for factories in the Shanghai area because they can't compete with their Guangdong counterparts on price), move up the value chain (e.g. from useless plastic trinkets to cars and airplanes), and utilize resources in poor provinces (e.g. our customer service office recently relocated to Gaungxi; everything is still really cheap down there).

All of this is part of the "plan". Sorry for derailing your thread; like tauphi said, just start using that website to buy train tickets. What's Ninghai like? Do they have Sbux and McD's there?

innovate isn't the correct term....copy more complex expensive products

Starbucks..McDonalds...more like building a 200M RMB yacht club.

If you are not involved in importing or locally producing something for the Chinese domestic market but merely sourcing in China for export, I suggest you start making intermediate- and long-term plans to do just that: move on to another country. By now it's pretty clear which way the winds are blowing on China costing, for nearly all inputs. For many items, it's been an illusion for awhile that China is a low-cost country--when you figure in what's been circumvented in China to keep those costs unsustainably low, it's not such a sad prospect for China to start being on the Losers' End for a change.

As to your current train woes, I just took a peek on availability on the official website and it looks like things are back out to 10 days, but on weekdays, it really is interesting how most trains Ninghai-Shanghai are sold out or nearly so, except for the evening train. Looks like a lot of the seats are being snapped up at Wenzhou, further up the line, leaving a lot less available for the intermediate stops like Ninghai. Maybe it is just legitimate sell-out, but there could be some shenanigans going on also on this route and the fact that you saw availability but were told they couldn't sell the tickets leads me to believe that somebody (company?) has an "informal" arrangement going on with whatever seat allotment Ninghai has. You're not doing anything wrong. Unfortunately, not really any other good and cost-effective alternatives that I can ferret out. What about taking a bus Ninghai-Ningbo (or reverse) and then train on the Ningbo-Shanghai segment? This won't help of course, if the problem is also on the latter segment rather than just on the Wenzhou-Ningbo part.

China is still a low cost country, and will remain so even with the upcoming wage increases and further appreciation of the RMB. I helped a guy buy a special type of light bulbs last month, and the cost was pennies on the dollar compared to in the US. Sure, VN or India might have been cheaper, but they don't make the product he required there... so moot point.

China has the factories, labor, and materials. India, Vietnam, Cambodia..
make things China doesn't want to deal with because there isn't the
profit.

2010 GDP US$ per capita:
China - 4382
Thailand - 4992
Indonesia - 2974
Philippines - 2123
India - 1371
Vietnam - 1174
Pakistan - 1030
Cambodia - 814
Myanmar - 742
Bangladesh - 642.
Within China, some rich coastal provinces are quite expensive:
Jiangsu - 7682
Zhejiang - 7390
Guangdong - 6440
The cheapest province is Guizhou - for reasons. Land is not flat for three li, so it will be hard to get your produce out.
Ditto about Yunnan, Gansu and Tibet.

But there are some quite accessible and yet cheap areas:
Anhui - 3045
Guangxi - 3050
Sichuan - 3104
Jiangxi - 3127

Oddly, some regions further inland are more expensive:
Qinghai - 3545
Hunan - 3576
Henan - 3605
Xinjiang - 3676
Shanxi - 3759
Ningxia - 3853
Heilongjiang - 3946
Shenxi - 3966
Hebei - 4079

So, where would you start up an export business?

I've always suspected that GDP numbers are understated because such a large amount of commerce takes place below the radar. For example, take all those mansions in Xuhui (Shanghai) that are owned by people who make less than $2000 per month.

Yes, supply takes time to catch up with suddenly increased demand. Especially thanks to Sheng Guangzu.

Hangzhou-Ningbo is a missing link in the high speed railway Shanghai-Xiamen. Are there any news about progress of high speed railway Hangzhou-Ningbo?

Also the top floor penthouse apartments were owned by relatives of those who issued the building permits. Performance bonus.

This one makes no sense to me, though there must be a reason (and, I won't rule out fabricated data... possibly to make up for make up for the short fall that I'm convinced exists in the wealthy areas)
Changsha is a kind of a boom town... you could almost call it China's Hollywood
I'm not really sure, but this doesn't surprise me so much. I've never seen much abject poverty during my travels there.
oil
coal (this one's a no brainer)
no first hand experiences
ditto
Where's that?
surrounding the capital is a good thing
Nanning:
-low cost everything
-decent universities
-helpful government
-HSR being developed to both Shenzhen and Viet Nam border