High- speed rail lines to extend to 70,000 km in 2035
The Chinese high- speed railway sector will aim to maintain its worldleading status in the new decade via a transformation plan that emphasizes smart and green technologies and high- quality service, leading Chinese railway experts told the Global Times on Wednesday.
The comments came as top Chinese leaders underlined high- speed rail as proof of China’s independent innovation.
Jia Limin, a leading expert in highspeed trains and a professor at Beijing Jiaotong University, said building on its existing success, China’s high- speed railway sector will remake itself with truly independent innovation, featuring smart and green technologies and offering high- quality service to all clients, including those from abroad.
Since the country launched its first bullet train service in 2007 and embarked on a successful journey to own the world’s most complicated high- speed rail network, which is led by a flurry of home innovations by Chinese scientists and engineers.
Total length of high- speed railways in China hit 37,900 kilometers at the end of 2020, up 2,900 kilometers from 2019, and almost double the length in 2015, according to the China State Railway Group.
Jia, who briefed top leaders on the technological strengths of Chinese high- speed trains in June 2016, noted that after a period of rapid development, China’s high- speed rail demonstrated apparent advantages in terms of adaptability, a full and complete industry chain, and an innovation system that could provide sustained impetus for innovation going forward.
In other words, China’s bullet trains could run perfectly in diverse climates and geographies, China could build bullet trains almost entirely relying on its own strengths, and China had the world’s leading labs and human capital for making bullet trains.
In terms of comprehensive strengths, Jia said China is in the top league alongside Japan and Germany.
As China’s high- speed rail sector moves forward, it needs to tackle bottlenecks in basic technologies in information and automation, as well as basic materials and parts.
“A project of using domestic chips and software in the country’s highspeed rail system is already in the research and development stage,” Jia told the Global Times on Wednesday.