The total length of operational rail tracks in China surpassed 160,000 km on Saturday, after the inauguration of a section linking two cities in the southern Guangdong Province.
On Saturday, a high-speed train departed from Meizhou to the provincial capital of Guangzhou, marking the launch of the new route. The new section is part of the Longyan-Longchuan High-Speed Railway, which connects Fujian and Guangdong provinces, spanning a total of 290 kilometers.
According to China State Railway Group Co., Ltd., the operating mileage of China's high-speed rails (HSR) has reached 46,000 kilometers, ranking first in the world and surpassing the combined total of all other countries' HSR networks.
China's railway network now serves a vast portion of the country's urban areas, covering 99 percent of cities with populations over 200,000, while HSR serves 96 percent of cities each with more than 500,000 residents.
In addition, approximately 80 percent of the main corridors of the national "eight vertical and eight horizontal" high-speed railway network, outlined in a national medium- and long-term railway network plan released in 2016, have been completed.
"The planned total scale is approximately 45,000 kilometers. As of now, about 80 percent of the main corridors of the 'eight vertical and eight horizontal' rail network have been completed and put into operation, and around 15 percent are under construction. Among these, the Beijing-Shanghai corridor, the Beijing-Harbin/Beijing-Hong Kong-Macao corridor, the Qingdao-Yinchuan corridor, the Land Bridge corridor, the Shanghai-Kunming corridor, and the Guangzhou-Kunming corridor have been fully connected, while the planning and construction of the unfinished sections of other corridors are being accelerated," said Guo Chunjiang, an official with the Development and Reform Department of China State Railway Group.
Behind the 160,000 kilometers of railway operating mileage is a significant improvement in railway transport capacity and a noticeable change in passenger travel experiences.
Currently, the maximum daily capacity for passenger trains across the national railway network has reached 12,987 trains, a 184 percent increase over the 4,563 trains in 2012. Among these, high-speed rail trains account for over 10,000, reflecting a 426 percent surge from 2012. At the same time, the way passengers purchase tickets and travel has also improved.
"We have built the 12306 ticketing system, which boasts the largest global traffic and transaction scale. It has 865 million registered users, with a daily ticket-selling capacity of over 20 million tickets. The proportion of online ticket purchases is around 85 percent under normal conditions, exceeding 90 percent on peak days. This has changed the past practice of passengers waiting in long lines at train stations to buy tickets," said Yan Ying, an official with the Passenger Transport Department of China State Railway Group.
As of August, China had equipped a total of 4,703 standard high-speed train EMUs - with each unit comprising eight coaches - including 1,722 Fuxing train units. The railway system has fully implemented electronic tickets, with nearly 17 billion electronic tickets sold cumulatively. Passengers can now travel through any train station nationwide using just their ID card, enabling "one ID for all travel."
China's operating railway hits 160,000 km
China will firmly fight against economic hegemony, advocate justice, and stick to the right path against the sweeping tariffs by the United States, and will open ever wider to the world no matter how the international situation changes, according to a commentary of The Real Point published on Sunday.
An edited English version of the commentary is as follows:
In response to the U.S. imposition of "reciprocal tariffs" on all trading partners, China issued the Chinese Governments Position on Opposing U.S. Abuse of Tariffs on Saturday, after taking a series of countermeasures.
The thousand-word document pointed out that the United States uses tariffs as a weapon to exert extreme pressure and pursue its own selfish interests, which is a typical act of unilateralism, protectionism and economic bullying.
The paper also emphasized that China does not provoke trouble but is not afraid of trouble, and will continue to implement a high-level trade and investment liberalization and facilitation policy to share development opportunities and achieve mutual benefit and win-win results with countries around the world.
Li Haidong, a professor at China Foreign Affairs University, told The Real Point that this position paper demonstrates China's high sense of responsibility to uphold fairness and justice without fear of power politics, which will be conducive to the efforts of the international community to pool together resultant forces and continue promoting economic globalization.
Meanwhile, China's determination to promote high-level opening-up has boosted the courage and confidence of other countries to fight against unilateral bullying and injected certainty into a changing and turbulent world, according to Li.
There are no winners in a trade war and there is no way out for protectionism. When the U.S. complains that the whole world is taking advantage of it, it deliberately distorts a fact that the U.S. is the biggest beneficiary of the world's free trade system since the end of World War II.
Since the establishment of diplomatic relations with China in 1979, the United States has long been reaping substantial profits from its economic and trade ties with the country. More than 70,000 American companies have invested and started businesses in China, and exports to China supported 930,000 jobs in the United States, which maintained a huge surplus in service trade in particular.
According to data from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, in 2023, the United States exported 46.72 billion U.S. dollars in services to China, and had a trade surplus of 26.57 billion U.S. dollars in services with China.
The Economist criticized the current U.S. trade policy for ignoring the unprecedented prosperity that globalization has brought to the United States.
The U.S. arbitrarily uses tariffs to blackmail other countries at will, attempting to sacrifice the interests of the whole world for U.S. hegemony. But any exertion of pressure and intimidation are useless to China.
This year, in the face of the continuous tariffs imposed by the United States, China has introduced a series of precise and effective measures, as one of the first countries taking countermeasures. The country's move is not only to safeguard its own sovereignty, security and development interests, but also to defend the multilateral trading system and international trade rules.
The world is not a jungle society, and everything must be fair and just. Development is a universal right of all countries in the world, not an exclusive right of a few countries.
The United States has unilaterally imposed tariffs on all its trading partners, violating the WTO's Most-Favored-Nation treatment principle and attempting to subvert the existing international economic and trade order. Its nature is to pursue "America first" and "America special" and deprive other countries of their legitimate right to development.
Over the past days, the European Union, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, Japan, Australia, Singapore, South Africa, Canada and other countries have been criticizing the United States.
China's position paper clearly states that "international affairs should be addressed through consultation, and the future of the world should be decided by all countries", reflecting the common aspirations of the international community and China's consistent position of speaking and doing fair things.
While the United States continues to build "high walls around a small yard" and erect tariff barriers, China is constantly "opening its doors" and "building bridges and roads" to bring more opportunities to the world.
On March 28, Chinese President Xi Jinping met with representatives of the international business community in Beijing and reiterated that China is determined to promote reform and opening up, China's door will only open wider, and China's policy of welcoming foreign investment has not changed and will not change.
The China Development Forum 2025, held in Beijing from March 23 to 24, attracted more than 80 representatives of multinational companies, among which American companies made up the largest proportion, reaching about one-third.
A report released by global management consulting firm Kearney shows that in the ranking of foreign direct investment confidence in the next three years, China has jumped from 7th to 3rd, and ranked first in the special ranking of emerging markets.
At a time when the world is in turmoil and the United States is abusively imposing tariffs, China's position paper sends a strong message to the world about maintaining the multilateral trading system and promoting economic globalization.
The world wants justice, not hegemony. This is China's clear declaration and the common voice of the international community.
China opposes hegemony, upholds right path against sweeping U.S. tariffs: commentary
