FAST TRACK:China's high- speed trains now lead rail technology

Hearing the news that the high-speed rail (HSR) train from Beijing to Shanghai began to operate on June 30, 2011, Zhu Lijun, who works in the Beijing branch of a Shanghai-based securities company, is upbeat about the convenient new transport option. She can now get from China's political center to the commercial hub in less than five hours. The key to the convenience is that the same train trip previously took 11 hours.

"Time is important for me as I'm often required to deal with urgent matters in Shanghai," she told ChinAfrica. "It even takes less time than traveling by plane, at about half the price of a flight," she said. "More importantly, I don't have to turn off my cell phone and can log on the Internet without any limitation."

What Zhu is excited about has resulted from China's efforts in upgrading its national railway network. Through five rounds of acceleration between  April 1997 and April 2004, trains had been upgraded to reach 160 km per hour. In April 2007, high-speed trains began to run on the existing rail lines at the speed of 200-250 km per hour. After that, China began to build lines specially for high-speed trains. In 2008, the Beijing-Tianjin intercity railway opened to traffic with a top speed of 350 km per hour. Now in 2011, welcome the newly operated Beijing-Shanghai line.

"It is the longest high-speed line ever built in a single phase, with the highest technological standards in the world," said Wang Yongping, spokesman of China's Ministry of Railways at a media briefing on June 26, 2011.

HSR network

According to the national mid- to long-term railway network plan revised in 2008, the Ministry of Railways plans to build eight HSR corridors, four running north-south and four going east-west. Most of the rail lines of the eight corridors are designated for passenger travel only. The plan also promises to build three intercity HSR networks to link large cities and metropolitan areas. They include intercity rails in Bohai Sea Rim Economic Circle, Yangtze River Delta region and Pearl River Delta region. The plan will be realized in 2020. At that time, the total length of railway networks will reach 120,000 km, including 50,000 km of HSR lines. The HSR lines will connect all pronvincial capital cities and cities each with a population of more than 500,000 in the Chinese mainland, covering 90 percent of the nation's total population.