The high-speed rail network will span more than 30,000 kilometers (18,650 miles) under the proposal, according to details released at a State Council Information Office briefing in Beijing Thursday. The distance, about 6.5 times the length of a road trip between New York and Los Angeles, will cover 80 percent of major cities in China.
The plan will see high-speed rail lines across the country expand by more than half over a five-year period
China will also add 3,000 kilometers to its urban rail transit system under the plan released Thursday.
At the end of 2015, China had 121,000 kilometers of railway lines, including 19,000 kilometers of high-speed tracks, according to a transportation white paper issued Thursday. The U.S. had 228,218 kilometers of rail lines as of 2014, according to latest available data from the World Bank.
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