China Opens Four High-Speed Rail Lines in One Day, Including Its Northernmost Route

China opened four high-speed rail (HSR) lines simultaneously on Monday, September 28, spanning the country’s north, northeast, northwest, and central regions and extending the national network to some of its most remote communities. The batch includes the Harbin-Yichun line, China’s northernmost high-speed railway, whose Yichun West station is now the highest-latitude HSR station in the country, according to Xinhua.

The four routes — the Xiong’an-Shangqiu section of the Beijing-Hong Kong HSR, the Xi’an-Ankang section of the Xi’an-Chongqing HSR, the Yichang-Xingshan HSR, and the Harbin-Yichun HSR — add roughly 1,142 kilometers of new track and together cross four major regions.

Four New Corridors

The longest of the four, the 552-kilometer Xiong’an-Shangqiu section, runs at a design speed of 350 km/h and carries up to 64 trains per day in its initial phase, with the fastest journey from Xiong’an to Shangqiu taking 2 hours 27 minutes. It fills in the northern gap of the Beijing-Hong Kong corridor — the “one vertical” of China’s “Eight Vertical and Eight Horizontal” backbone plan — and brings high-speed rail to a string of counties including Renqiu, Suning, Hejian, Shenzhou, and Linqing, as China News Service reported.

The 171-kilometer Xi’an-Ankang section, also designed for 350 km/h, links the Guanzhong plain to southern Shaanxi across the Qinling Mountains, with the fastest Xi’an East-to-Ankang West trip at 45 minutes. It ends the non-HSR status of Zhashui, Zhen’an, and Ankang counties and is intended to support rural revitalization in the Qinba mountain region.

The 101-kilometer Yichang-Xingshan line creates a connecting passage between the Shanghai-Chongqing-Chengdu and Zhengzhou-Chongqing corridors. According to the Economic Information Daily, it cuts the fastest Wuhan-Chongqing travel time from 4 hours 56 minutes to 3 hours 54 minutes, a reduction of 1 hour 2 minutes.

The Northernmost Line

The Harbin-Yichun HSR is the symbolic centerpiece of the batch. Running 318 kilometers at a design speed of 250 km/h through nine stations, it brings Suihua and Yichun into the high-speed era and expands the Harbin-centered “two-hour traffic circle.” Harbin-to-Yichun travel drops to as little as 1 hour 46 minutes, while Suihua South is reachable in 42 minutes.

The line is also a feat of engineering. Construction began in 2022 across terrain where winter temperatures plunge to minus 40 degrees Celsius, cutting through permafrost in the Xiaoxing’anling forest region. According to Sina News, it is China’s first high-speed railway to cross a high-cold patchy permafrost zone. Before the line opened, a train trip between Harbin and Yichun took about seven hours, and driving took roughly four.

A China Daily commentary published during the line’s testing phase described it as “both a milestone project extending Chinese HSR into high-latitude extreme-cold zones and a new transport engine to leverage northern Heilongjiang development,” invoking the phrase that “ice and snow are also gold and silver.”

Strategic Significance

Beyond the individual routes, analysts frame the simultaneous openings as a milestone for the densification of China’s HSR backbone. “Four new lines opening simultaneously in north-south and east-west directions in one day means more than just several more HSR lines — it is an important symbol of the densification and reinforcement of the Eight Vertical and Eight Horizontal HSR network,” said Ou Guoli, an expert at the national high-end think tank Sustainable Transport Innovation Center and director of the China Transport Economics Research Center at Beijing Jiaotong University.

The four lines align with four flagship national strategies: Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei coordination and the Xiong’an New Area, Northeast comprehensive revitalization, the Western Development drive coupled with Qinba-area rural revitalization, and the Yangtze River Economic Belt.

A Network Beyond 50,000 Kilometers

The openings build on a network that reached 50,400 kilometers of operating HSR by the end of the 14th Five-Year Plan, up 32.98 percent from 37,900 kilometers — making China’s system by far the world’s largest. Under the 15th Five-Year Plan, China Railway has set a target of roughly 60,000 kilometers of high-speed rail within a national rail network of about 180,000 kilometers by 2030.

For Yichun — the “forest capital” of the Xiaoxing’anling region — the new line is expected to accelerate a shift toward eco-tourism, forest wellness, and the so-called under-forest economy, sectors the region has promoted since logging bans. As the China Tourism News noted, the opening is seen as a boost for tourism and ecological resource development along the route.

What’s Next

With the Yichang-Xingshan and Xi’an-Ankang lines now in service, attention turns to the remaining segments of their parent corridors: the Ankang-Chongqing portion of the Xi’an-Chongqing HSR and the Nanchang-Jiujiang section of the Beijing-Hong Kong line both remain under construction. As those gaps close, the “Eight Vertical and Eight Horizontal” network — described by the CNR as reshaping regional geography “from point-axis to network” — will edge closer to completion, with overall progress expected to exceed 80 percent.