Published : 04/07/2025

On July 4, 2005, the construction of China's Beijing-Tianjin Intercity Railway (京津城際鐵路) officially commenced.

Before the Beijing-Tianjin Intercity Railway, the highest speed of Chia's domestic trains at that time was only 70 to 80 km/h.

In October 1978, the then Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平) led a delegation to visit Japan, during which they took the Japanese Shinkansen train "Hikari 81" to Kyoto.

In 1990, the former Ministry of Railways of China began a feasibility study on constructing high-speed rail. However, due to technical difficulties, the research was exceptionally challenging, with progress being intermittent over more than a decade.

By 2004, with the issuance of the national Medium and Long Term Railway Network Plan, China had a clear development blueprint for high-speed rail, including the proposal to build the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway.

However, to build up this 1,300-km long high-speed railway was a huge challenge for China at that time, which had no prior experience in building high-speed rail.

At this juncture, the construction of the Beijing-Tianjin Intercity Railway, as a comprehensive pilot section of the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway, was put on the agenda.

The construction technology of the Beijing-Tianjin Intercity Railway not only reached the world's highest standards at that time, but also incorporated numerous new materials, equipment, and technologies with independent intellectual property rights during its implementation.

This has also formed a complete set of Chinese standards for high-speed railways.

The Beijing-Tianjin Intercity Railway is China's first high-speed railway, symbolising China's official entry into the high-speed rail era. Later China became the 4th country in the world to systematically master the technology of high-speed rail with speeds of 300 km/h.