Transportation becoming a pioneer for China's modernization drive

Editor's note:  The year 2025 marks the final year China implements its 14th Five-Year Plan. Over the past five years, from technological innovation to green development, from rural revitalization to a tightly knit high-speed rail network, the Chinese people have experienced remarkable transformation in their daily lives. To reflect on and celebrate the shared progress among the Chinese nation, CGTN presents "Our Nation, Our Home: A Five-Year Journey" series. This is the fourth article in the series. Liu Kun is a commentator with CGTN.

Starting this October, travelers in Beijing, eager for some early cooling autumn air or a view of the volcano crater Tianchi Lake, and blessed with roughly 600 yuan, or about 84 U.S. dollars, can take a four and a half hour high-speed rail trip to the Changbai Mountains in northeast China’s Jilin province.

Before the start of operations of this leg of the high-speed rail from Shenyang in Liaoning province to Baihe in Jilin province, avid skiing lovers had to get to their favorite resorts using a combination of airplanes, buses or cars, or by slow train. Now if they start in the morning in Beijing, by lunch time they can already be in the heart of the Changbai Mountains.  Aside from helping tourism, the railway is also boosting local industries in medicine, mineral water bottling, etc.

Spanning the hinterlands of the Changbai Mountains, the Shenyang-Baihe high-speed railway cuts through hills and rivers: 77 percent of the entire route is through bridges or tunnels. Cold Dongbei winters, complex geology and oftentimes fracturing rock masses demand world-class stability in construction design and material. In every aspect, this leg of the high-speed rail in northeast China is an engineering feat.

Putting it into perspective, the Shenyang-Baihe high-speed railway is just one of the many remarkable projects China has made during its 14th Five Year Plan period in the transportation industry.

In its railways, the country debuted a prototype of the world's fastest train, the CR450 bullet train running at 400 kilometers per hour. High-speed rail has covered 97 percent of cities with populations of over 500 thousand in the country. Offering mobile meal ordering, seat bookings, carriages specifically designed for the silver population and other special services, railways are now among the top choices for Chinese people to go and visit places. 

In its road network, China completed the Tianshan Shengli Tunnel, the world's longest expressway tunnel, through the snow-covered mountains of the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region in the northwest. The tunnel cuts travel time through the Tianshan Mountains from three hours to about 20 minutes, and the journey from the regional capital of Urumqi to Korla, a major city in southern Xinjiang, from more than seven hours to about three hours.

Moreover, the 30 thousand plus rural towns and 500 thousand plus villages across the country are now all accessible through paved roads. With muddy roads now a thing of the past, many villagers have been venturing out to set up their own businesses in catering, tourism, etc. Trips to nearby villages among the country's city dwellers are now among the favorite ways to spend weekends.

In air travel, with an annual investment of 100 billion yuan during this five year period, travel services are now available to 91.2 percent of the Chinese population. Driven by booming e-commerce businesses, the country's global air freight is also on the rise, with international air cargo volume reaching nearly 9 million tonnes in 2024, an increase of 32.8 percent over 2020.

China has also expanded its global transport network over the past five years, improving connectivity and boosting cross-border trade. With the China-Laos Railway, travelers are now able to breakfast in Kunming in China's Yunnan province and dinner in the Lao capital Vientiane on the same day. And with the operation of the Chancay Port in Peru, a flagship project under the Belt and Road initiative, bananas, blueberries and avocadoes arrive from South America to Asia 10 days faster than before.

With a closely-knit and high-tech powered network of air, rail, road and waterways, China's national transportation system is indeed a pioneer of China's modernization drive as Chinese President Xi Jinping noted. 

A fast developing transport network should of course be attributed first and foremost to the hard work done by millions of designers, engineers, construction workers and so on. It is also a product of the successive five-year planning strategy that China has used to chart its course since the founding of the People's Republic in 1949. All the way from a postwar impoverished economy to today's economic and technological powerhouse, China's rise well demonstrates a combination of planning vision and execution devotion; and the five-year planning system is no doubt an advantage of China's political system.

In today's China, on an average day, about 15 thousand flights are made, about 35 million vehicles are travelling on expressways and about 478 million parcels are being delivered to cities and towns. As Chinese policy makers gather in Beijing for the fourth plenary session of the 20th Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee to formulate the country's next grand plan, the world awaits what the coming five years will hold for China's transportation industry. 

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