# Past, Present and Future: The Evolution of China's Incredible High-Speed Rail Network > China has built the world's largest high-speed rail network and keeps expanding it. Here's the story of the project's past and its future. - URL: https://langandtrip.com.ua/en/article/kytai-stvoryv-naibilshu-u-sviti-merezhu-vysokoshvydkisnykh-zaliznyts-i-prodovzhuie-ii-rozshyriuvaty/ - Language: en - Published: 2024-03-13 - Categories: Travel, Culture, Historic Sites, Tours, China, Events --- At the start of the 21st century, China had no high-speed railways at all. Slow and often uncomfortable trains crawled across this vast country, and the low average speed turned journeys like Shanghai to Beijing into a test of travel endurance. Today the picture could not be more different. The world's most populous country now has, by a wide margin, the largest high-speed rail network on the planet. No fewer than 37,900 kilometers (roughly 23,500 miles) of lines crisscross the country, connecting all of its major mega-city clusters, and every one of them has been completed since 2008. Half of that total was built in just the last five years, with another 3,700 kilometers due to open in the final months of 2021. By 2035, the network is expected to double in length again, reaching 70,000 kilometers. With top speeds of 350 km/h (217 mph) on many lines, intercity travel has been transformed, and the airlines' dominance on the busiest routes has been broken. By 2020, 75% of Chinese cities with populations of 500,000 or more had a high-speed rail connection. Spain, which has the most extensive high-speed network in Europe and ranks second in the global league table, is small fry by comparison, with a little more than 2,000 miles of dedicated lines built to run at speeds above 250 km/h. The United Kingdom, meanwhile, currently has just 107 kilometers, while the United States has only one rail route that (barely) qualifies as high-speed: Amtrak's Northeast Corridor, where Acela trains currently reach a top speed of 240 km/h on expensive rebuilt sections of an existing line shared with commuter and freight traffic. ## A Symbol of Economic Power China's ambition is to make high-speed rail the dominant mode of transport for long-distance domestic travel, but these new railways carry far greater significance than that. Just as Japan's Shinkansen did in the 1960s, they stand as a symbol of the country's economic might, rapid modernization, growing technological prowess and rising prosperity. For the ruling Chinese Communist Party and its leader Xi Jinping, high-speed rail is also a powerful tool for social cohesion, political influence and the integration of scattered regions with diverse cultures into the mainstream. "Building these new railways is part of Xi Jinping's grand plan to 'integrate the vast national market'," says Dr. Olivia Cheung, a research fellow at the SOAS China Institute at the University of London. "It is also meant to reflect his 'new development philosophy', a key concept of which is 'coordinated development'. "His scheme is grand in the sense that it goes beyond simply connecting existing cities; it links existing cities to brand-new mega-cities being built from scratch. A well-known example that Xi is very proud of is the Xiongan New Area in Hebei province, about 60 miles southwest of Beijing." In this sense, it can be argued that China is repeating the history of the railways; many early railways in North America, Europe and the colonies of European empires were built with similar aims. The development of rail networks in Russia, especially the Trans-Siberian Railway, as well as in Prussia, France, Italy and the British Empire, among others, was heavily shaped by political and military demands alongside economic development. Yet what took decades in the 19th and early 20th centuries, China is achieving in just a few years. ![](/storage/image/prev/july-article-image-13-1-2024.jpg) "The Chinese have built an entire high-speed rail network on an unprecedented scale, often faster and certainly more reliably than China's domestic flights," says rail travel expert Mark Smith, better known as "The Man in Seat 61". "It's hard not to be impressed by the sheer size of some of the new stations and the efficiency with which the system moves enormous numbers of people, all with reserved seats and increasingly without any need for paper tickets, just a scan of your ID card or passport at the gates." At first, China relied on high-speed technology imported from Europe and Japan to build its network. The world's rail engineering giants, such as Bombardier, Alstom and Mitsubishi, were understandably keen to get involved, given the potential size of the new market and China's ambitious plans. Over the past decade, however, it is the country's homegrown companies that have become global leaders in high-speed train technology and engineering, thanks to the remarkable expansion of their domestic network. ## Overcoming the Growing Pains of High-Speed Transport China's enormous size and its vast differences in terrain, geology and climate have presented the country's railway engineers with extraordinary challenges. From the sometimes freezing city of Harbin in the far north to the near-tropical humidity of the Pearl River Delta metropolis, to the 1,776-kilometer Lanzhou to Urumqi line crossing the Gobi Desert, China's engineers have quickly built up extensive expertise in laying railways over, under and through whatever terrain lies in their path. This rapid growth has not come without problems, though. While centralized state funding, planning and approval allow China to avoid the endless legal disputes that have dogged projects in Europe and the United States for decades, the downside is that the new lines pay little regard to the existing communities along their route. China's high-speed growing pains also contributed to the tragic collision at Wenzhou in July 2011, when two trains crashed on a viaduct and derailed, sending four carriages to the ground below, killing 40 passengers and injuring nearly 200 others. Public confidence in high-speed rail was badly shaken by the accident, leading to widespread speed reductions and the suspension of construction work on new lines while an official investigation was carried out. Over the past decade, however, there have been no reports of major incidents, and passenger numbers have grown exponentially as the network has expanded. For anyone used to the scale of conventional railway projects, the statistics are often mind-boggling. The 815-kilometer Zhengzhou East to Wanzhou line, costing 13.5 billion dollars, was completed in less than five years. When the new 180-kilometer Xuzhou to Lianyungang line opened in February, it completed a continuous 3,490-kilometer high-speed rail link between Jiangsu province and Urumqi in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. Heading north from the capital, trains now cover the 1,700-kilometer Beijing to Harbin route in just five hours, requiring an average speed of 340 km/h. By the end of 2020, China National Railways was running more than 9,600 high-speed trains every day, including the world's only high-speed overnight sleeper services on some of the longer routes. On some routes, more than 80% of the track runs on elevated structures, towering over densely built-up cities and valuable farmland on seemingly endless concrete viaducts. More than 100 tunnels, each over 10 kilometers long, have also been bored, along with impressively long bridges over natural obstacles such as the Yangtze River. ## A High-Tech Showcase of Efficiency Not content with pushing the limits of speed, endurance and civil engineering, Chinese companies are among the first in the world to roll out new technologies such as autonomous (driverless) train operation and advanced signaling and control systems. The driverless "bullet trains" linking Beijing and Zhangjiakou in the northern province of Hebei can reach speeds of up to 350 km/h, making them the fastest autonomous trains in the world. The new route, opened in December 2019 as part of preparations for the 2022 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games in Beijing, cut the journey time for the 174-kilometer trip from three hours to less than 60 minutes. The fastest trains cover the distance in just 45 minutes. ![](/storage/image/prev/july-article-image-13-2-2024.jpg) Built in just four years, the line has 10 stations serving two of the main Winter Olympic venues, plus another at Badaling Changcheng that offers faster access for tourists to the Great Wall of China. The latter is the deepest high-speed railway station in the world, sitting 102 meters (335 feet) below ground. The passenger cabins of the autonomous trains feature expanded storage areas for winter sports equipment, seats with 5G touch control panels, intelligent lighting, thousands of safety sensors and removable seats for passengers in wheelchairs. Facial recognition technology and robots are used at the stations to help travelers with navigation, luggage and check-in. The huge new stations serving the major cities on the high-speed network feel more like airports, with acres of gleaming polished marble and glass, vast information screens and waiting lounges where passengers relax until their train is announced. There's no more pointless loitering on cold, windy platforms here! "While the UK argues over building High Speed 2, China has built a nationwide high-speed network," says rail expert Smith. "China's high-speed lines are ruthlessly efficient. Once you've booked, you simply swipe your ID card or passport at the gates and off you go." Fares, he says, start at just 13 dollars. The new Olympic line offers some hints of where rail travel is heading in China and beyond, but the technological boundaries are being pushed in other areas too. In late 2020, China's state-owned rail engineering colossus CRRC unveiled a prototype high-speed electric train for international routes, capable of running at speeds of up to 400 km/h. It is claimed to operate not only in temperatures ranging from -50°C to +50°C, but also to be fitted with newly developed variable-gauge wheelsets that would allow it to run directly into Russia, Mongolia and Kazakhstan, which use a wider gauge than the standard Chinese 1,435 mm. More ambitiously, the gauge-changing capability could also open up the possibility of direct trains to India and Pakistan via Myanmar and Bangladesh. ## What's Next? Expansion into neighboring countries is already under way with the 5.3 billion dollar Laos to China railway, which is due to open by the end of 2021. Although it is not a high-speed railway, the new 257-mile line is a significant extension of Chinese railway influence, providing improved links from southern China to the Laotian capital, Vientiane. Construction is also progressing on a railway to Bangkok in Thailand and eventually south to Singapore. CRRC is already the world's largest supplier of rail vehicles and technology, but as its domestic market matures, it has set its sights firmly on billions of dollars in global exports every year. As China seeks to extend its influence across Asia and into Europe and Africa through the ambitious Belt and Road Initiative, the railway plays a fundamental role in creating the new "Silk Road" it desires. ![](/storage/image/prev/july-article-image-13-3-2024.jpg) "China's high-speed rail industry has become one of the country's core economic sectors, and the high-speed network has brought greater mobility and prosperity to the population," said Zhang Jianwei, president of Bombardier Transportation China, in 2020. The proposed new railways crossing the Himalayas into India and Pakistan, or reaching Russia and the former Soviet states of the Central Asian republics, would not only provide improved trade routes for Chinese exports but also bring enormous contracts (and challenges) for the country's rail and civil engineering conglomerates. Backed by investment funds and loans, these projects also strengthen China's position as a regional superpower, drawing developing countries ever further into its gravitational field by increasing their economic dependence on Beijing. "What remains to be seen, and it will be genuinely fascinating to find out, is how Beijing will systematically link its domestic rail networks with the Belt and Road Initiative," says Cheung. "The BRI is an ambitious, all-encompassing and complex grand strategy, but suspicion about China's intentions is growing. "The challenges facing the BRI are not discussed publicly, including how a number of countries are scaling back, suspending or canceling their BRI contracts signed with China. They are worried about the possibility of losing control over strategic assets if they default on repaying Chinese loans." Even so, in November 2020 a proposed 48 billion dollar project was announced: a 965-kilometer link between Chengdu, the provincial capital of Sichuan, and western Tibet near the Indian border. An extension of the existing Lhasa to Shigatse railway, which opened in 2014, it is thought to be a forerunner of a planned line to Kathmandu in Nepal and beyond. These moves are viewed with suspicion in India, China's biggest regional and economic rival, adding tension to an already strained situation along their borders. Although its trains are now among the fastest in the world, China is also spending billions of dollars on maglev (magnetic levitation) technology, which would allow it to run passenger services at speeds of up to 620 km/h, well beyond the current limits of steel wheels on steel rails. Two lines with a combined length of around 170 miles are currently under construction: Shanghai to Hangzhou in Zhejiang province and a 110-kilometer underground route linking Guangzhou and Shenzhen, two of the largest cities in the densely populated Pearl River Delta region. The latter is expected to eventually be extended to Kowloon in the former British territory of Hong Kong. These projects build on the experience gained from the German-backed maglev line at Shanghai's airport, which opened in 2003 and is currently the only line of its kind in public service. Taking a characteristically pragmatic approach to boosting ground transport speeds, China sees maglev as a better alternative to the heavily hyped but unproven Hyperloop for bridging the gap between high-speed rail and air travel on long-distance routes.