China has the world's largest high speed railway network, to date, there is already 19,000 km high speed rail track in operation and China will have 30,000 km high speed train tracks by the end of 2020.

However, the financial sustainability of high speed rail has always been a challenge.

The total debt of China Railway has reached 3 trillion yuan and each year China Railway spends up to 700-800 billion yuan on new construction projects and the idea of being profitable seems to be a wishful thinking.

Having said that, the Beijing-Shanghai HSR reported net profits last year.

The research team at ANBOUND Consulting, however, suggests that the Beijing-Shanghai HSR might just be an exception.

In addition to the management factors and financial costs, the largest winning point of Beijing-Shanghai HSR is its enormous passenger flow.

The passenger flow of 130 million in 2015 was the most fundamental basis for its annual profit of 6.6 billion yuan.

In other words, if the HSR fails to transport 100 million passengers, it will be difficult to achieve the profitability level like Shanghai-Beijing HSR.