The lines, spread across the country's north, northeast, northwest and center, are designed for top speeds of 250 kph to 350 kph, state broadcaster CCTV reported.

The longest is a 552 km section linking the Xiongan New Area in northern China's Hebei Province with Shangqiu in central Henan Province, cutting the fastest trip between them to 2 hours and 27 minutes.

Up to 64 trains a day will run on it initially, including new services from Beijing West Railway Station to Hefei and Huangshan North, China Daily reported. Eleven counties and county-level cities along the route are getting high-speed rail service for the first time.

The section is part of the Beijing-Hong Kong high-speed railway, one of China's main north-south trunk routes. Its northernmost stretch, from Beijing's Fengtai Station to Xiongan, is still in preparatory planning, People's Daily Online reported.

Xiongan, set up in 2017 to relieve urban pressure on Beijing, is a signature project of President Xi Jinping. Its resident population has reached about 1.4 million, an official at China's National Development and Reform Commission said in December 2025.

"You are looking finally at a [high-speed] rail link out of Xiongan, which hitherto has been a huge station with limited patronage but is now linked to the nationwide network," David Feng, an independent Chinese railway specialist, told the South China Morning Post. He said the line would also bring more long-distance trains from Beijing Daxing International Airport.

A train in China. Photo by Unsplash

In the northeast, the 318 km Harbin-Yichun line in Heilongjiang Province is the northernmost high-speed railway China has built, cutting travel between the two cities from about seven hours to under two, Xinhua reported.

Designed for 250 kph, the line will initially carry up to 38 trains a day.

In the northwest, a 171 km section from Xi'an to Ankang in Shaanxi Province crosses the Qinling Mountains and cuts the fastest trip between the two cities to 45 minutes, CCTV reported. It is the first stretch of a planned line to the southwestern megacity of Chongqing and will initially carry up to 20 trains a day.

In central Hubei Province, the 101 km Yichang-Xingshan line links two national trunk lines. It trims the fastest rail trip between Wuhan and Chongqing from 4 hours and 56 minutes to 3 hours and 54 minutes, China News Service reported.

The additions extend what is already the world's largest high-speed rail network, which stood at 50,400 km at the end of 2025, according to China State Railway Group figures reported by Xinhua.

China accounts for more than two-thirds of the world's high-speed track, according to the Paris-based International Union of Railways. The country's first high-speed line, between Beijing and Tianjin, opened in 2008.

China State Railway Group expects 284 million rail passenger trips during a 16-day travel period from Sept. 23 to Oct. 8, spanning the Mid-Autumn Festival and the weeklong National Day holiday that starts Oct. 1.

A railway official told China Business Journal that would be the biggest holiday rail flow on record. That is largely because the travel window is four days longer than last year's; daily volume is expected to stay flat at around 17.75 million trips.