A total of 1.69 billion passenger trips have been made on the Beijing-Guangzhou high-speed railway since it went into operation 10 years ago, official data showed.

A bullet train stops at the platform of Beijing West Railway Station in Beijing, capital of China, Dec. 26, 2022. (Xinhua/Zhang Chenlin)

Thanks to the existence of this railway, travel time between the capital Beijing and the southern economic hub Guangzhou has been slashed from over 40 hours to about eight hours.

As the backbone of the high-speed rail network in China, the 2,298-km Beijing-Guangzhou high-speed railway is closely connected with 12 other high-speed railways in the country.

In June this year, the Beijing-Wuhan section of the railway raised its speed from 310 km/h to 350 km/h, reducing the shortest trip between Beijing and Wuhan, capital of central China's Hubei Province, by about half an hour to three hours and 48 minutes.

At present, China boasts some 3,200 km of high-speed railways with an operating speed of 350 km/h, on lines such as the Beijing-Shanghai High-speed Railway, the Beijing-Tianjin Intercity Railway, and the Beijing-Zhangjiakou High-speed Railway.