30,000 km expansion of rail network planned

Nation also intends to transform high-speed rail industry into an economic driving force

China intends to build 30,000 km of train tracks by the end of 2020, extending the total length of its railways to 150,000 km, a Ministry of Transport official said on Thursday.

Some 11,000 km of these railways will be for high-speed trains, yielding a total of about 30,000 km of high-speed rail, Zhang Dawei, deputy head of the ministry's planning department, said at a news conference in Beijing on Thursday.