Discussion keeps the world turning This is Roundtable If you're listening to Roundtable,
I'm Neil Holin joined by Steve and Yixing.
Coming up soon, every country builds railways.
China built them through deserts, frozen plains, earthquake zones,
plateaus that collapse when they get wet, and mountains that refuse straight lines.
Lately, the country passed its 50,000 km network milestone.
Let's take a chance to do a reality check about the past,
present, and future of China's high-speed rail.
As of December 2025, China has officially crossed a breathtaking threshold.
Its high-speed railway network now spans over 50,000 kilometers.
To put that in perspective, this single network could circle the earth with room to spare.
The crowning achievement that pushed the nation past this milestone is the launch of the Xi'an-Yan'an High-Speed Railway.
This is another way for engineering, and more significantly,
it's a symbolic bridge between China's modern technological and its historical roots.
So let's start with this exciting news.
This Xi'an Yan'an line is opening on December 26th and this 300 kilometers stretch connecting the provincial capital Xi'an with Yan'an when serving as a base for the Communist Party of China during wartime.
And the whole train designed for 350 kilometers per hour reducing travel time from nearly 2.5 hours to just about one hour.
And that is when people live in these two areas, they can actually,
the line replaces the winding slower mountain routes with a high efficiency corridor,
bringing people into just one hour economic circle.