Hundreds of millions of Chinese travellers embarked on the world’s largest annual migration, snaking across the country’s mammoth rail network to take part in Lunar New Year celebrations.
Authorities expect around half a billion individual train journeys across the multi-day holiday, an astonishing mass movement only possible thanks to China’s staggering high-speed network.
The country had virtually no high-speed trains at the start of the century, but has since built the world’s largest network, with six times more track than all of the European Union combined. Price advantages largely explain Beijing’s huge buildout: China constructs high-speed lines at around half what it costs in the EU and about a fifth as much as in the US.
