Rail transport is an important mode of long-distance transportation in China. As of 2024, the country had more than of railways, the 2nd longest network in the world. China had more than of high-speed rail (HSR), the longest HSR network in the world.
The railway sector in China is essentially operated by the central government. Almost all rail operations are handled by the China State Railway Group Company, Limited, a state-owned company created in March 2013 (as China Railway Corporation) after the dissolution of the Ministry of Railways and was converted into a joint-stock company and placed under the control of the Ministry of Finance in June 2019.
Operationally it is divided between the conventional network which is mixed use handling both freight and passenger service and the high speed network.
China's railways are the busiest in the world. In 2019, railways in China delivered 3.660 billion passenger trips, generating 1,470.66 billion passenger-kilometres and carried 4.389 billion tonnes of freight, generating 3,018 billion cargo tonne-kilometres. Freight traffic turnover has increased more than fivefold over the period 1980–2013 and passenger traffic turnover has increased more than sevenfold over the same period. During the five years 2016–2020, China's railway network handled 14.9 billion passenger trips, 9 billion of which were completed by bullet trains, the remaining 5.9 billion by conventional rail. The three figures surged 41 percent (from 10.6 to 14.9 billion), 152 percent (from 3.6 to 9 billion) and decreased 16 percent (from 7 to 5.9 billion) from those during the 12th Five-Year Plan period, respectively.
Driven by need to increase freight capacity, the railway network has expanded with the country budgeting $130.4 billion for railway investment in 2014, and has a long-term plan to expand the network to by 2050. China built 9,000 km of new railway in 2015. History
Qing dynasty (1876–1911)
The first recorded railway track to be laid in China was a long miniature gauge demonstration line that a British merchant assembled outside the Xuanwumen city gate at Beijing in 1865 to demonstrate rail technology.In his book "The Chinese Railways" published by Cheng Lin in 1935, he described the line as "a toy railway" The Qing government was uninterested and had the line dismantled. The first railroad to enter commercial service was the Woosung railway, a 14.5 km railway from Shanghai to Woosung (modern Shanghai's Baoshan District) which opened in 1876. It was built with investment from Jardine Matheson. In October 1876, the Qing bought the railway and demolished it the next year for a number of reasons (including that there had been a fatality on the track).
Until the defeat of China in the First Sino-Japanese War, the government remained hostile toward railway construction. Beginning in 1895, the government began to grant rail concessions to foreigners, and permitted direct connection to the capital Beijing.
By 1911, there were about of railroads in China, mostly designed, built, owned and operated by foreign companies. This was still well behind the industrialized world, the United States had roughly of rail at the time. The first indigenous-designed and -constructed railway by Chinese was the Beijing-Zhangjiakou Railway built from 1905 to 1909, a difficult job due to the mountainous terrain. The chief engineer of this railway was Zhan Tianyou, who is known as the Father of China's Railway.
Republic of China in mainland period (1912–1949)
During the Republic of China era from 1912 until 1949, the development of the railway network in China slowed due to repeated civil wars and the invasion of Japan in the Second Sino-Japanese War. One of the few exceptions was in Northeastern China (Manchuria). The Russian Empire opened the Chinese Eastern Railway in 1901; after the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905), the Japanese gained control of the portion of the Chinese Eastern Railway south of Changchun, using it to create the South Manchuria Railway Company (SMR) in 1906; this company was often referred to as "Japan's East India Company in China" due to its extensive influence in the political and economic situation of Manchuria. During the reign of the Fengtian warlords from 1912 till 1931, numerous privately owned railway companies were formed. Some of the railway investment in the late 1930s was financed by the China Development Finance Corporation associated with businessman and statesman T. V. Soong.
After the Japanese staged the Mukden Incident on 18 September 1931 as a pretext for invading Manchuria and the subsequent establishment of a puppet state called "Manchukuo", private railways were nationalized and merged to form the Manchukuo National Railway (MNR). In 1935, the Japanese bought the northern portion of the Chinese Eastern Railway from the Soviet Union and merged it into the MNR. In addition to the MNR and SMR, several other railway companies were established in the Japanese-occupied parts of China, including the North China Transportation Company, the Central China Railway, and the East Manchuria Railway. In 1945, just after the Second Sino-Japanese War, there were of rail, of which nearly half – – was located in Manchuria.
People's Republic of China (1949–present)
After the establishment of the People's Republic of China, the new government under Mao Zedong invested heavily in the railway network. The Ministry of Railway's railroad building was important in China's national industrialization campaigns, mass mobilization, and military logistics. Academic Elisabeth Köll writes that during the Mao era, the Ministry's railways "represented the speed, economic efficiency, punctuality, discipline, technological advances, professionalism, dedication, and heroism necessary to promote the ideals of the party and the government at large."
The first time that Chinese enterprises designed or built their own locomotives was after the founding of the People's Republic of China. Because of the emphasis on national self-reliance in Mao era China, the locomotive industry relied primarily on domestically developed technologies. Because of limitations in coal, China developed and mass-produced diesel locomotives.
From the 1950s to the 70s, lines, especially those in western China, were expanded. One example is the railway from Lanzhou to Ürümqi, which was built between 1952 and 1962. In Southwestern China, where difficult terrain prevails, several mountain railways were constructed, such as the Baoji–Chengdu railway, built in the 1950s, and the Chengkun railway, built in the 1970s. The railway to Tibet, one of the highest in the world, was finally completed and opened to the public in 2006. Today, every province-level entity of China, with the exception of Macau, is connected to the railway network.
Not only has the Chinese railway network expanded in size since 1949, but it has also seen great technological advances. Before the 1980s, most of the railways were powered by steam. China's first diesel locomotive, the Dongfeng, was introduced in 1958 and their first production model diesel, the DF4, was introduced in 1969. However, the early dieselization efforts were slowed by problems with the early DF4s and steam locomotive production continued into the late 1980s. During the 1980s and 90s, diesel and electric locomotives replaced the steam engines on main lines. However, steam locomotives didn't retire from some provincial railways until the 21st century. In December 2005, the world's last regular revenue mainline steam train finished its journey on the Jitong railway, marking the end of the steam era. Nevertheless, there are still some steam locomotives used in the industrial railways in China.
Rail in China expanded greatly beginning in 1965 with the Third Front campaign to develop basic industry and national defense industry in China's rugged interior in case of invasion by the Soviet Union or the United States. The primary achievement of railroad construction during the Third Front construction was the building of ten new interprovincial lines. Building the Chengdu-Kunming and the Guiyang-Kunming lines linked all southwest provincial capitals using rail for the first time. The Xiangfan-Chongqing and Hunan-Guizhou connected the central and western provinces by rail for the first time.The additional rail built during this period greatly decreased travel time in the country's interior.
From 1990 to 2001, on average some of new railways, of multiple-track, and of electrified railways were opened to traffic annually, 2.4-fold, 1.7-fold and 1.8-fold increases respectively over the previous 10 years. At the end of 2004, railways in operation reached , including of multiple track and of electrified railways.
Since 1997, train speed has been raised significantly six times. The top speed of express trains increased from , and passenger trains can reach maximum speed of on some sections of the arterial railways.
In March 2013, the Ministry of Railways was dissolved and its safety and regulation duties were taken up by the Ministry of Transport, inspection duties by the State Railway Administration and construction and management by the China Railway Corporation (CR).
In 2020, China Railway announced plans to expand the railway network by 33% or about , aiming to connect all cities with a population of over 200,000 by rail, and all with a population of over 500,000 by high-speed rail before 2035. As of July 2020, 95% of cities over 1 million have been connected by high-speed rail.
Railway administration Railways in China are defined into three main legal categories: national railways, local railways and designated railways. National railways are managed by the State Council of the national government and account for the bulk of railways in China. Local railways, which are operated by provincial or municipal governments, totaled a mere in 2013, less than 4% of the national total. Designated railways are operated by enterprises such as mines and steel mills. Since the 1980s, the national and local governments have jointly funded railway construction, sometimes using private capital. Joint stock railways constituted about 32% of the national network in 2013. The Luoding Railway in Guangdong, built as a joint-stock railway with investments from the local and national governments in 2001, was gradually privatized and is one of the few privately owned passenger railways.
China's railway sector is essentially operated by the central government. For over fifty years, except for a brief interlude during the Cultural Revolution, all national railways were operated and regulated by the Ministry of Railways of the People's Republic of China. In March 2013, the State Council broke up the Railway Ministry into the National Railway Administration to oversee railway regulation and the China Railway Corporation, a state-owned company, to operate the national railways. The National Railway Administration is a sub-ministerial bureau assigned to the Ministry of Transport. The China Railway Corporation is a ministerial-level state company under the State Council. The last railway minister, Sheng Guangzu, became the general manager of the China Railway Corp. He outranks Lu Dongfu, the chief of the National Administration of Railways, who had previously been a deputy railway minister.
Railway bureaus and management