Chinese high-speed rail: the strategy that crushed Europe

Written by Sophie Renassia

Published on January 15, 2026

In 1981, France launched the Paris–Lyon TGV at 260 km/h and established Europe as the global centre of high-speed rail. For decades, the continent dominated: Italy accelerated, Germany followed, Spain rolled out a spectacular network. High-speed rail became a marker of power, modernity and, in a way, national prestige.

Then, in just fifteen years, a country with no high-speed lines at all not only caught up with Europe, but largely overtook it. Today, China has more than 48,000 kilometres of high-speed lines, around 70% of the world’s total network! That figure deserves a closer look: a single country concentrates the majority of the world’s high-speed rail. By comparison, Spain, Europe’s champion, has around 4,000 km of high-speed lines.

How did Beijing manage to build on such a scale, in such a short time? And above all: why? Because behind the 350 km/h trains lies a strategy that goes far beyond transport. Territory, economy, power, influence… we explain everything.

And if you’d rather experience this investigation immersively, you can watch our video or listen to it in audio format (on our podcast Je t’offre un rail?, the podcast that will make you addicted to trains):

The spectacular rise of Chinese high-speed rail

A country in full transformation, a territory under strain

To understand why high-speed rail has become such a central issue in China, we need to go back to the 1980s and 1990s. At that time, the country was undergoing profound transformation: the economy was beginning to open up, industrialisation was accelerating, cities were growing at an unprecedented pace and hundreds of millions of people were gradually entering the market economy. It was the start of what many describe as the greatest economic boom in modern history.

But this boom quickly ran up against a major constraint: the territory. China is a country the size of a continent, with megacities emerging on the east coast and a much more isolated interior. Connecting cities is not just a matter of comfort: it is a question of national cohesion, economic productivity and social stability.

At that time, however, Chinese rail was far from up to the task. In the 1990s, trains ran at an average speed of 48 km/h and some journeys took more than 24 hours. China was behind, not for lack of interest, but because its priorities lay elsewhere: lifting its population out of poverty remained the absolute priority.

That did not prevent the country from observing. In 1978, Deng Xiaoping travelled to Japan and discovered the Shinkansen. The speed of the train made a deep impression on him. From that moment on, he was convinced that high-speed rail would play a key role in China’s future.

2004: the plan that changed the scale

It was not until 2004 that things really began to accelerate. That year, the government adopted a key document: a medium- and long-term national plan for the rail network. The objective was clear: to build 12,000 kilometres of high-speed lines, organised around eight major corridors (four north–south and four east–west axes) capable of structuring the entire Chinese territory.

At the time, the project seemed totally out of scale. And yet…

2008: the Olympic trigger

Everything changed on 1 August 2008, just days before the opening of the Beijing Olympic Games. China inaugurated its first high-speed line between Beijing and Tianjin. For the first time, Chinese trains were running at 350 km/h in commercial service. At the time, this was unprecedented, and these trains were capable of going faster than European TGVs.

The dynamic was launched. Three years later, China was already operating the longest high-speed rail network in the world. A historic reversal, extremely rapid by infrastructure standards. By comparison, the French network is now 17 times smaller than China’s. The United Kingdom, the historic birthplace of the railway, still has no high-speed line crossing its territory outside of Eurostar.

In other words, China has not only caught up with high-speed rail. It has largely overtaken it.

The secrets of the Chinese method

If China has managed to build the world’s largest high-speed rail network in record time, it is neither a miracle nor an accident. It is the result of a very specific method, designed as an industrial system on the scale of an entire country.

Execution speed as a principle

Since 2008, China has inaugurated on average nearly 3,000 kilometres of high-speed line per year. That is equivalent to building the entire French TGV network every single year.

This pace is only possible because China does not build line by line, but network by network. Very early on, Beijing defined a national master plan: start with the main arteries, then connect secondary lines to them. The result: dozens of construction sites launched simultaneously across the country, with overall coherence.

Massive, deliberate investment

The second pillar is money. Rail is elevated to the status of a national priority and the use of debt is fully assumed. Today, China State Railway’s debt is close to €800 billion.

But for China, infrastructure is not only meant to be profitable: it is meant to structure the economy, connect employment hubs, and circulate workers and capital. The reasoning is simple: build now, the benefits will come later.

This ability to invest quickly and heavily is made possible by a highly centralised system. In China, major infrastructure projects are decided at the top of the state apparatus and largely executed by state-owned companies. There are no long public inquiries, no endless legal appeals. Routes are imposed, expropriations are fast, and decisions are rarely challenged.

The industrialisation of rail

The third pillar is industrialisation. In the 2000s, China signed technology transfer agreements with Siemens, Alstom and Bombardier. The objective was clear: learn fast, very fast.

Chinese engineers absorbed this know-how and developed their own trains under the CRH label, then Fuxing. As early as 2010, a prototype reached 486 km/h in tests. In 2017, the Fuxing CR400 sets entered service at 350 km/h. At the end of 2023, China unveiled the CR450, designed for a commercial speed of 400 km/h.

At these speeds, performance no longer depends solely on the train. The rails are welded over hundreds of metres to avoid any break, the catenaries are reinforced, tunnels are widened to absorb air pressure, and thousands of sensors constantly monitor wear and weather conditions. Nearly half of the network runs on bridges or in tunnels to avoid tight curves and unstable terrain.

China has therefore not merely laid tracks. It has built a complete, independent railway system: giant stations like Beijing South, ultra-efficient control centres, fully digital ticketing and unprecedented frequencies. On the Beijing–Shanghai line, a train runs every three minutes at peak times. The network is formidable in its efficiency. And this is no accident.

The geopolitical strategy behind high-speed rail

The deployment of high-speed rail in China is not just a story of tracks and records. It is also a tool serving a political, economic and geopolitical ambition.

Unifying the territory and redistributing growth

By linking most cities with more than 500,000 inhabitants, the state drastically reduces distances. Cities that were once isolated find themselves just a few hours from major economic centres, facilitating trade, investment and the movement of workers.

For the population, this strategy is part of an implicit contract: accepting the authority of the one-party state comes with the promise that, wherever you live, you will eventually benefit from the fruits of growth. High-speed rail thus becomes concrete proof of that promise.

The effects are already visible. Regions long left behind are experiencing new momentum thanks to rail. China does not hesitate to build lines in sparsely populated areas to give them new life, even if they are not immediately profitable.

The example of Xinjiang: linking, anchoring, integrating

The Lanzhou–Ürümqi high-speed line, 1,776 kilometres long, crosses deserts and mountains to the heart of Xinjiang, in the far west of the country. It is the highest-altitude high-speed line in the world, and also one of the least frequented on the network.

But its main role is not economic. Above all, it serves to physically anchor the region to the rest of China, facilitate movement in a sensitive area and assert the integration of the territory.

High-speed rail thus redraws the map of the country. Medium-sized cities gain attractiveness because they are now less than two or three hours from major metropolises. In just a few years, the country has literally shrunk.

A global soft power tool

This success does not stop at China’s borders. High-speed rail has also become a soft power tool. Building the world’s largest high-speed network in record time is a spectacular demonstration of modernity and industrial capacity.

Since the launch of the New Silk Roads in 2013, China has financed and built railway lines in Asia, Africa and elsewhere. Most are conventional freight lines, but some include high-speed rail. This is the case in Indonesia, with the Jakarta–Bandung line, inaugurated in 2023.

Today, CRRC has become the world’s leading rail rolling stock manufacturer. Trains designed in China are now running all over the world.

For a long time, when a country wanted to build a high-speed line, it turned to Europe or Japan. What is changing today is that China is increasingly seen as a new possible reference: an actor capable of delivering complete projects, quickly and on a very large scale.

What next: a model without limits?

By 2035, China officially aims for 70,000 kilometres of high-speed lines. A staggering figure. But this race also raises many questions. Some lines are lightly used, several stations are almost empty, sometimes poorly located or too close to competing routes. Railway debt stands at around €800 billion, and its repayment relies largely on the central state and the provinces.

Since 2021, the Chinese authorities have begun to adjust course. Beijing is seeking to slow the pace, better select projects and give greater priority to intercity lines, which are more useful for everyday travel.

There is also the environmental question. Trains are a much less polluting alternative to planes, but running trains at 350 km/h requires far more energy than more moderate speeds. In Europe, the choice is different. As David Goeres reminds us about the TGV M:

“We could design a train running at 360 km/h, but that is not our goal. The ideal speed is around 320 km/h.”

So, can the Chinese model inspire Europe in certain respects, or is it too specific to be transposed elsewhere? Only time will tell…

Written by Sophie Renassia

Issue du monde de la communication et des médias, Sophie est Responsable éditoriale chez HOURRAIL ! depuis août 2024. Elle est notamment derrière le contenu éditorial du site ainsi que La Locomissive (de l'inspiration voyage bas carbone et des bons plans, un jeudi sur deux, gratuitement dans ta boîte mail !).

Convaincue que les changements d’habitude passent par la transformation de nos imaginaires, elle s’attache à montrer qu’il est possible de voyager autrement, de manière plus consciente, plus lente et plus joyeuse. Son objectif : rendre le slow travel accessible à toutes et tous, à travers des astuces, des décryptages et surtout, de nouveaux récits.

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