The German Transrapid, which does not run in Germany, is now supposed to run in China, and Germany also pays development aid, according to the claims on a sharepic.

In that Sharepic, Germany's environmental and foreign policy is sharply addressed: On the one hand, the start of the Transrapid in Germany was prevented by environmental activists, but instead this train is now running in China, which, following the Sharepic's arguments, does not care about the environment and is now running this Transrapid operates. Nevertheless, Germany still pays development aid worth 800 million euros to China.

Here is the sharepic that we get a lot of inquiries about:

The sharepic for the German Transrapid in China
The sharepic for the German Transrapid in China

The text on the sharepic:

“It doesn’t drive, it floats: the new German Transrapid in China.
German engineering developed by German engineers in Germany, the Transrapid:
The project was killed by left-green politics, environmental associations, etc. in Germany. On the planned routes, European hamster nests, dung beetle populations, rare butterflies, toad migrations and low-flying rattle storks were discovered, making construction impossible.
The groundbreaking, environmentally friendly and energy-saving German invention is now experiencing its success not in Germany but in China!
The Chinese are happy about the free German technology of the future. 1000 kilometers of route are now being built for this purpose.
And the absolutely crazy thing: Germany also transfers almost €800 million in development aid every year. In Germany, truants jump around on Fridays shouting meaningless slogans. If it weren’t so sad… the laughter gets stuck in your throat.”

Below we will address the individual claims in the sharepic.

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Claim: Politics and environmental associations prevented the Transrapid in Germany

The idea for a Transrapid has been around since 1976, and since then test routes or at least prototypes have been built from time to time. The first project in Bavaria failed in 1977 because the farmers did not want to sell their land for it.

The last plans for a Transrapid in Germany were 25 years ago: in 1994, the federal government planned to build a line from Berlin to Hamburg. But at the beginning of 2000, railway boss Hartmut Mehdorn declared the project a failure: a total of 6 billion euros would have to be invested in order to save 20 minutes of time.

While the project initially looked very attractive, the construction costs for the routes continued to rise. At were supposed to be built in 2010 , but these also failed and continue to fail due to financing. In addition, Deutsche Bahn is becoming more and more efficient with its high-speed trains, so that a real advantage of the Transrapid continues to shrink: costs that are too high for too few advantages.

It was not “left-green” politics or environmental associations that prevented the project, but rather rising construction costs for insufficient benefits.

Claim: The Transrapid is more environmentally friendly

There was a lot of debate about this. There is no doubt that a Transrapid runs more quietly than an ICE , but the raised trains are not exactly elegant visually. Energy consumption is also lower if the Transrapid travels over 300 kilometers per hour, below which energy consumption is 10 percent higher than that of an ICE 3.

A study by the “Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy” comes to the conclusion that the Transrapid performs significantly better than the ICE in the technology sector as long as the speed does not exceed 400 km/h. From this speed onwards, the environmental values ​​of Transrapid and ICE converge.

The bottom line is that the study comes to the conclusion that the Transrapid is more environmentally friendly, but in order to optimize it, the electricity required by both vehicles must also be generated more ecologically. The previous test routes are also less optimal, since, for example, with a Transrapid that travels at an average speed of 350 km/h, there would only be a time saving of 10 minutes between Hamburg and Berlin.

In many respects, the Transrapid is actually more environmentally friendly than the ICE, as long as the travel speed and utilization remain within certain limits.

Claim: The German Transrapid is now running in China

already running in China in 2002 , on a 30-kilometer route between the outskirts of Shanghai and Pudong Airport. The then Chancellor Gerhard Schröder was among the first passengers.

But that was it, because fake news that was spread in China deterred many passengers :
A professor at a university in Beijing is said to have claimed that radioactive radiation was produced during the journey, which would only become noticeable in the body decades later. The residents of the planned extension felt like guinea pigs; the protests prevented further construction.

Since then, China has developed its own high-speed trains, which now have a network of over 25,000 kilometers.

Since 2016, China has been developing its own Transrapid, which also uses magnetic levitation technology, but is otherwise developed completely independently by China and, at 600 km/h, is said to be significantly faster than the German model.

In 2020 , the first route for this China-owned Transrapid will be built, which will be 1,000 kilometers long. More than 30 Chinese companies, universities and research institutes worked on the development of this maglev train. It is unlikely that there will be any German technology in it: the Thyssen factories that built the Transrapid have long since closed, and the technology from 2002 has of course long since become obsolete.

The Transrapid, which will operate in China, only has magnetic levitation technology in common with the German model at the time.

Claim: Germany pays China almost 800 million euros in development aid annually

The sums paid are largely promotional loans from the Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau, i.e. cheaper loans than on the open financial market. So simply put, it is money that Germany gets back with interest !

These loans to China are granted with a specific intention: This allows German companies to specifically promote renewable energies in China and thereby also make profits. Although China is an economic power, this has been to the detriment of nature and the environment.

In China, CO2 production has increased by 300 percent since 1990, and in Germany it has fallen by 27 percent since then. Investments in China's environmental technology, which are supported by loans granted, are ultimately a benefit for the climate as well as for German companies and for Germany itself, which receive these promotional loans back with interest.

The payments referred to under the general term “development aid” are, for the most part, worthwhile investments.

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Conclusion

The claims on the Sharepic are largely incorrectly or misleadingly .

Article image: Shutterstock / hxdyl


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Notes:
1) This content reflects the current state of affairs at the time of publication. The reproduction of individual images, screenshots, embeds or video sequences serves to discuss the topic. 2) Individual contributions were created through the use of machine assistance and were carefully checked by the Mimikama editorial team before publication. ( Reason )