A bullet train pulls in at the Shandan Horse Ranch Railway Station of the Lanzhou-Xinjiang Railway in Shandan County, Zhangye City, northwest China's Gansu Province, Dec. 5, 2021.Photo:Xinhua

China's high-speed rail network hits a new milestone on Thursday, as it reached the length of the equator at around 40,000 kilometers, after a railway linking Anqing in East China's Anhui Province and Jiujiang in East China's Jiangxi Province with a designed speed of 350 kilometers per hour officially came online.

The record-breaking milestone further highlighted China's achievements in not just high-speed rail technology and construction but also its overall economic strength, which will help boost domestic as well as regional transport networks, experts noted. 

The 176-kilometer railway snakes down through rivers, lakes, urban main roads and other railways, posing complex construction challenges and risks, the railway builder China Tiesiju Civil Engineering Group told the Global Times on Friday.

The rail link will shorten the current four-hour journey from Nanchang in Jiangxi to Hefei in Anhui to around two hours, boosting the railway network between provinces in Central China and serving the development of the Yangtze River Economic Belt, the company said. The Anqing-Jiujiang section is part of the famed high-speed railway connecting Beijing and Hong Kong.

In addition to efforts to expand the high-speed rail network, China needs to further increase the utility rate of high-speed railways over land transportation section to compress general logistics costs, in order to achieve China's stated carbon emission reduction targets, Sun Zhang, a mass transit expert and professor at Shanghai Tongji University, told the Global Times on Thursday.

"Demands for passenger and cargo transports vary across railway systems in coastal region and inland regions, which determines the development direction of high-speed railway," said Sun.

China's efficient high-speed railway system will play an increasingly important role in the implement of the Belt and Road Initiative and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership in the future, according to experts.

"China has both land border and coast line, high-speed railway is able to connect multiple international ports with inand provinces, and further accelerate international corporations between China and ASEAN member countries," said Sun.

In a sign of the country's marked progress on high-speed rail, the China-Laos railway became fully operational on December 3, one of the four high-speed rails that were open to traffic during the first 10 days of December, according to media reports, the country is set to open an estimated seven additional high-speed rail links operating at 350 kilometers an hour in 2022.

Sun pointed out that China's high-speed railway export will encounter challenges from some Western countries, including US, from a political viewpoint, as well as competition from other countries with high-speed railway technique such as Japan.

"China must apply more advanced equipment on high-speed railway and keep improving technical level at hand," Sun noted.