Transportation in the People‘s Republic of China
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A road in Beijing, China‘s capitalTransportation in the People‘s Republic of China has experienced major growth and expansion since 1949 and especially since the early 1980s. Airports, roads, and railway construction will provide a massive employment boost in China over the next decade.
Rail, which is the primary mode of transportation, has doubled in length since the mid-twentieth century, and an extensive network provides sufficient service to the entire nation. The larger cities have metro systems in operation, under construction, or in the planning stage. The highway and road system also has gone through rapid expansion, resulting in a rapid increase of motor vehicle use throughout China. Although China‘s transportation system comprises a vast network of transport nodes across its huge territory, the nodes tend to concentrate in the more economically developed coastal areas and inland cities along major rivers.
The physical state and comprehensiveness of China‘s transportation infrastructure tend to vary widely by geography. While remote, rural areas still largely depend on non-mechanized means of transportation, a modern maglev train system was built in China to connect the city center of Shanghai with its international airport.
Much of contemporary China‘s transportation systems have been built since the establishment of the People‘s Republic in 1949. Prior to 1950, there were only 21,800 km of railway lines. In 2007, the railway network has since been expanded to 78,000 km. Rail travel remained the most popular form of transport, although air travel has also experienced significant growth since the late 1990s. The government-led effort — that began in the 1990s — to connect the country by expressways via the "National Trunk Highway System" has expanded the network to more than 53,000 km by the end of 2007, making China‘s the second longest expressway network in the world (after the United States).