China's railway revolution changes the benchmarks for Europe and the USA
In less than two decades, China has built a railway system that has changed the way the world discusses the future of transport. What at the beginning of the century still looked like an infrastructure experiment is today a network that connects megacities, industrial regions, airports, ports, the country's interior and remote areas that had long been isolated in transport terms. According to data from the Chinese state administration published at the beginning of 2025, the total length of China's railway network at the end of 2024 reached 162,000 kilometres, of which 48,000 kilometres made up the high-speed rail network. This confirmed China's position as the country with by far the largest high-speed rail network in the world.
The scale of the Chinese system is especially important because this is not only a transport project, but a broader economic model. High-speed railways in China have shortened travel times between major urban centres, changed workers' daily commuting patterns, opened new markets for inland cities and reduced pressure on air and road transport on the busiest corridors. According to Chinese official data, more than 3,100 kilometres of new railway lines were opened during 2024, including more than 2,400 kilometres of high-speed lines. This annual pace of construction shows why the Chinese model is increasingly mentioned in discussions about whether Europe can speed up its own cross-border projects and whether the USA can finally move from the planning phase to the actual construction of high-speed rail.
High-speed rail as a state development project
The Chinese approach differs from the European and American approaches above all in the degree of centralisation, the speed of decision-making and the method of financing. The construction of the high-speed rail network in China relied on a strong role for the state, long-term planning, technology standardisation and coordination between national, regional and local authorities. Such a model made it possible to build large corridors in a shorter time, but at the same time it raised questions about debt, the profitability of individual sections and long-term maintenance costs. Despite these doubts, the transport effect of the network is difficult to ignore: high-speed trains have become an everyday part of life for millions of passengers, and many routes that previously depended on air transport or several-hour road journeys are now covered by train.
According to the International Union of Railways, the global high-speed rail network in the 2024 edition of its atlas covered about 65,000 kilometres of lines in various stages, and China was by far the largest individual system. At that time, the UIC listed more than 45,000 kilometres of infrastructure for high-speed trains for the Chinese network, while later Chinese official data for the end of 2024 spoke of 48,000 kilometres. The difference in figures stems from the different timing of data collection and methodology, but the trend is clear: China has set a benchmark that no other region currently reaches.
A large part of the success comes from the fact that high-speed rail in China has been treated as the backbone of regional development, and not merely as a service for passengers between a few of the richest cities. Lines toward western, mountainous and economically less developed areas often have broader goals than commercial profit alone. They connect labour with markets, facilitate access to education and healthcare services, encourage domestic tourism and create conditions for the expansion of industrial chains beyond coastal metropolises. Such an approach shows why Chinese railway policy cannot be viewed separately from industrial policy, urbanisation and regional planning.
Freight trains between China and Europe as the second part of the story
China's railway revolution is not only about passenger high-speed trains. An equally important, although less visible, part of the system consists of freight links toward Europe and Asia. According to official Chinese data, freight trains between China and Europe made 19,000 trips in 2024, which was 10 percent more than a year earlier, and carried more than 2 million TEU containers. Chinese institutions state that this network connects hundreds of cities and that since its launch in 2011 it has become one of the recognisable infrastructure elements of the Belt and Road Initiative.
In November 2024, China's state agency Xinhua reported that the 100,000th freight train in the China-Europe connection system had departed from Chongqing. This symbolic threshold showed that rail, although slower than air transport and often more expensive than maritime transport per unit of freight, has an important role in supply chains for goods that need faster movement than shipping, but at lower costs than air transport. It is especially important during periods of disruption on maritime routes, geopolitical tensions and changes in global logistics.
For Europe, this network has a dual meaning. On the one hand, it opens additional logistics opportunities for industry and trade. On the other hand, it is a reminder of how fragmented the European continent still is when it comes to rail transport. Freight that can travel thousands of kilometres from China through several countries often faces different technical standards, terminal capacities, border procedures, bottlenecks and different national priorities in Europe. That is precisely why the Chinese example for European institutions is not only a story about train speed, but also about system coordination.
Europe has tradition, but not a unified network
Europe is the cradle of many technological and operational solutions in rail transport, and France, Spain, Germany and Italy have been developing high-speed trains for decades. Even so, the European system has remained highly uneven. High-speed lines are very developed in some countries, while major differences are visible in Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe. Travelling by train between two capitals is often not a problem because of one major obstacle, but because of a series of smaller ones: different signalling systems, a lack of a coordinated timetable, slow sections, weak cross-border infrastructure and complicated ticket purchasing.
The European Commission therefore presented a plan in 2025 to accelerate the development of high-speed rail links in the European Union. According to the Commission, the goal is to better connect European cities, shorten travel times and increase the competitiveness of rail compared with air transport over medium distances. The plan builds on the policy of the trans-European transport network TEN-T, which envisages that passenger rail lines on the core and extended core network must enable speeds of at least 160 kilometres per hour by 2040. The Commission also emphasises the introduction of the single European Rail Traffic Management System, ERTMS, which should reduce technical fragmentation.
In the European debate, the Chinese example is often used as proof that rapid construction is possible, but the comparison has limitations. The European Union is not a single state, but a community with different budgets, infrastructure managers, regulatory systems and political priorities. Projects must go through national procedures, public consultations, environmental assessments and complex financing. This slows implementation, but at the same time reflects a different institutional model. The key question for Europe is not whether it can copy China, but whether it can make its own model fast and coordinated enough for rail to become a real alternative to shorter flights and long car journeys.
The USA is still looking for its first major breakthrough
In the United States of America, the discussion about high-speed trains has lasted for decades, but the results cannot be compared either with China or with the leading European systems. The reasons are well known: heavy dependence on cars and air transport, scattered urban development, complex property and legal issues, high construction costs, political divisions and a weak tradition of intercity passenger rail transport outside a few corridors. Nevertheless, in recent years projects have appeared that could change the American picture.
The most visible among them is Brightline West, a planned high-speed connection between Las Vegas and Southern California. The U.S. Department of Transportation approved 2.5 billion dollars for this project through private activity bonds, and in 2024 an agreement was also signed on 3 billion dollars in federal support. According to announcements by American and project institutions, the roughly 218-mile section should largely follow the I-15 highway corridor, with trains designed for speeds greater than 186 miles per hour. The project is important because it could become the first true American high-speed rail connection in commercial service.
The second major American example is California high-speed rail, conceived as a connection between the San Francisco area and Los Angeles. This project has become a symbol of both the ambition and the problems of American infrastructure policy. In its 2025 report, the California High-Speed Rail Authority states that the project is in a phase of reassessing criteria, scope, costs, procurement strategy, passenger forecasts and timelines. Public debates in the USA often focus on delays and cost increases, while supporters emphasise long-term benefits for the capacity of the transport system, emissions reduction and the economic development of inland California.
What China shows the rest of the world
The Chinese example shows that high-speed rail can be more than a prestigious infrastructure project. When the network is dense enough, trains serve not only tourism and business travel, but also change the distribution of housing, work and investment. Cities that were once several hours away from the most important economic centres can become part of a wider daily or weekly gravitational zone. This changes real estate prices, the labour market, the organisation of universities, healthcare services and industrial zones. In transport terms, the network effect becomes more important than an individual section.
For Europe, the most important lesson is that high-speed rail cannot be successful if it is reduced to disconnected national projects. A passenger who has to combine several reservation systems, unreliable transfers and slow cross-border sections to travel from one city to another will not experience the train as a simple alternative to the airplane. The European Commission therefore increasingly emphasises joint planning, interoperability and simpler ticket purchasing. In this context, China's advantage is not only in the length of its lines, but in the fact that the passenger often experiences the network as a single system.
For the USA, China's message is even more direct: without project political stability, secured financing and a clear corridor, high-speed rail remains an idea, not a transport service. Brightline West shows that private capital and public support can create a more concrete model, especially when an existing transport corridor is used and when the market is clearly defined. The California project, on the other hand, shows how expensive and sensitive major infrastructure interventions become when they are developed for decades through changing political and financial conditions.
The limits of the Chinese model
Although the Chinese network is often described as an infrastructure miracle, its model is not easily transferable. China has a different land-policy system, a different structure of state-owned enterprises, greater room for central planning and different relations between the public interest, local communities and investors. In Europe and the USA, procedures for expropriation, environmental protection, public procurement and judicial oversight are significantly more complex. This does not mean that Western projects are necessarily doomed to slowness, but it does mean that they cannot achieve the Chinese pace without deep institutional changes.
There is also the question of financial sustainability. High-speed lines can be extremely useful on corridors with high population density and strong demand, but they are less profitable when they connect sparsely populated areas or when they are built without a clear plan for integration with local transport. The Chinese system can withstand such projects because it views them through a broader development logic. Europe and the USA more often require detailed justification of costs, sources of revenue and a politically acceptable relationship between benefits and risks.
Despite the differences, the global direction is increasingly clear. Climate goals, congested motorways, overloaded airports and the need for more resilient supply chains are bringing rail back to the centre of transport policy. China has shown what happens when rail is treated as strategic infrastructure of the 21st century. Europe is trying to accelerate and connect a system that already has a long tradition, but suffers from fragmentation. The USA is trying to prove that high-speed rail can also function in a country that for decades built its transport culture around cars and airplanes.
China's railway revolution therefore does not change only China. It changes expectations. Passengers, industry and politicians now have a concrete example of a network that in a short time has become an everyday transport reality. For Europe and the USA, this is not a call for simple copying, but pressure to make their own systems more efficient, better connected and more resilient in the long term. In the transport of the future, it will not be enough to have a few high-speed trains; what will be decisive is having a network that reliably connects cities, regions and economic flows.
Sources:
- The State Council of the People's Republic of China – official data on the length of China's railway network and high-speed rail network at the end of 2024 (link)
- The State Council of the People's Republic of China / CGTN – data on 19,000 China-Europe freight train trips in 2024 and more than 2 million TEU containers (link)
- Xinhua – report on the departure of the 100,000th freight train in the China-Europe connection system in November 2024 (link)
- International Union of Railways (UIC) – data from the High-Speed Rail Atlas 2024 edition on the global high-speed rail network and China's position (link)
- European Commission, Mobility and Transport – plan to accelerate the development of high-speed rail links in the European Union and goals for connecting cities (link)
- European Commission, TEN-T – information on the trans-European transport network, the target of speeds of at least 160 km/h by 2040 and the introduction of ERTMS (link)
- U.S. Department of Transportation – decision on 2.5 billion dollars through private activity bonds for Brightline West (link)
- Brightline West – announcement on the signing of the agreement on 3 billion dollars in federal support for the Brightline West project (link)
- California High-Speed Rail Authority – Project Update Report 2025 on the status, costs, scope and strategy of the California high-speed rail project (link)