*Chinese railways' operational mileage accounts for 6 percent of the world's total, and complete 24 percent freight volume of the world railways, average rail transport density ranks first in the world;

*Chinese railway existing operational mileage stands at 74,000 km, with an annual dispatch of 1.1 billion passengers/times and annual delivery of 2.5 billion tons of goods, the two indexes of the rotation volume of passengers and the delivery volume of goods rank first in the world.

It runs a special train of international containers, with the whole journey reaching 9,750 km.

According to an official with the transport bureau of the Ministry of Railways, in order to meet the rapidly developing material flow demand of Sino-European international trade, the Chinese Ministry of Railways has recently united with the railways of Mongolia, Russia, Belarus, Poland and Germany to open a 9,750-km-long transport passageway for special trains of containers that run through six countries from Hohhot, Inner Mongolia (China) via Mongolia and Russia, stretching to Frankfort (Europe). Goods exported to Eastern, Central and Western Europe can be transported through this passageway, the vast railway network is linked up with the material circulation chain for Sino-European international trade, goods can be delivered to Poland, Germany, France, Czech, Hungry, Denmark, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Belgium and Austria.

Sources say that Chinese railways will continue to implement the speed-acceleration strategy, while raising the speed of passenger trains on the main trunk lines to 200 km per hour, Chinese railways will vigorously develop transport services, including railway container trains, refrigerated train, special freight train and a variety of through transport, organize freight transport express trains running at 120 km per hour, further optimize transport organization, speed up passenger, material, capital and information circulations, so as to satisfy the demands of modern material circulation for fast transportation.

"Intelligence-oriented" railway management, with operational mileage reaching 100,000 km

Railway is the main artery of the national economy. At present, railway departments are expediting realization of the goals such as directing the running of train in an intelligent way, passenger-freight marketing socialization, and business management modernization. They are setting up a railway e-commercial system and realizing the advance booking of train tickets; through networking platform and IT (information technology), they provide clients with all-round services such as the reservation of wagons, transport expenses, mid-way information, arrival notice and the handling of complaints. At the same time, to tackle the acute shortage of railway transport capacity, the Ministry of Railways is busily implementing the "medium- and long-term plans of railway networks" approved by the State.

It is reported that from now to 2020, the Ministry of Railways will gradually build a 12,000-km-long special line of passenger transport between provincial capital cities and larger cities, the speed of passenger train aims to reach 200 km and beyond per hour; it will improve the railway networking structures in the central and eastern regions, expand the scale of railway networks in the western region, and plan to build 16,000-km new lines; it will strengthen technical renovation of existing railway networks and the building of hinge lines, build large-capacity coal transport passageways, build an additional 13,000-km second line for the existing line, electrify the 16,000-km existing line. By the year 2020, the nation's railway operational mileage will reach 100,000 km, passenger and freight trains will run on separate lines along main busy trunk lines, the rates of double-tracking railways and electrified railways will both reach 50 percent.

By People's Daily Online