The China Railway recorded a landmark in the form of 4.01 billion passengers by the end of November in the year 2024 as compared to 3.86 billion journeys made by passengers in 2023. This is the first time that passenger trips exceeded 4 billion on China’s rail tracks, which indicates a very high stepped-up pace of recovery and increased travel demand post-COVID.
During this time, the turnover was in the order of 1.49 trillion passenger kilometers which comprised nearly half the overall passenger turnover in the country. Experts are attributing to this increase in the investment in railway infrastructure and better services.
The amount of fixed-asset investment from January until October had reached 635.1 billion yuan (US$87.38 billion) in the railway sector, up from 10.9% in the previous year. By the end of November, the length of China’s railway network was 160,000 km long, of which 46,000 kilometers were high-speed rail, fortifying its position as a world leader in railways.
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This network reaches practically 99 percent of Chinese cities with more than 200,000 people, with 97 percent of those larger cities with over 500,000 residents connected by high-speed rail. There has also been a spike in cross-border passenger transport in miles, including the number of border-crossing trips in miles covered by the China-Laos Railway, which already has a total of 249,000.
However, winter tourism has increased demand, as it has in Northeast China. Traveling to ice-and-snow attractions like Yabuli and Mohe has increased, with 85,000 tourists traveling on 163 special train trips to favorite resorts in Heilongjiang Province by the end of November.