PEK PVG 682 mi
PEK CAN 1166 mi
PVG CAN 747 mi
These distances in China, between Beijing, Guanghzou and Shanghai, in mile, do not look all that train-friendly to me, if the train has a top speed of 280omph, 150mph.
If anyone had the will power to do it in 1986, the VFT was hoping to give three hours SYD-BNE, three hours SYD-MEL, one hour SYD-CBR and two hours CBR-MEL. As a seven year project the VFT could have been running by 1995. The Channel Tunnel, which was a far more ambitious project happened.