China’s High-speed Railways

China’s high-speed railway train service was introduced in April 2007 featuring high-speed train sets called Hexiehao (Harmony). They can run at a speed of from 250 km/h to 350 km/h on upgraded or dedicated high-speed tracks. The highest design speed of China’s high-speed railways is 380 km/h. On December 3rd, 2010, China’s homemade “Harmony-CRH380A”, a new generation of experimental high-speed train, reached a high speed of 486.1 km/h along the track from Beijing to Shanghai. Currently, China is among the top runners of high-speed railway technology, with a leading edge in some fields. China now is exploring super high-speed trains that can travel at 1,500 km/h. High-speed magnetic suspension rail transport is the development direction for railway technology. China aims to reach a speed of up to 1,500 km/h by 2021. Over the past decade, China has rapidly developed its high-speed railways. The country currently has the world’s longest high-speed railway network, about one-third of which has been designed to run at a speed of 350 km/h. By the end of 2017, the operating mileage of China’s high-speed railways had reached 25,000 kilometers, accounting for two-thirds of the global high-speed railway network. It was in little more than 10 years that China’s railway realized its leap-forward, which made it possible for China to head into “an era of high-speed railways”.