This Day, That Year: July 24

Editor's note: This year marks the 70th anniversary of the founding of New China.

In the early 1950s, the government began to build the Chengdu-Chongqing railway. It was the first railway built after the founding of New China.

In July 1952, the 505-kilometer railway opened to traffic, linking Chengdu, Sichuan province, and Chongqing.

Since then, the country's railway network has developed rapidly. An item from Jan 13, 1983, in China Daily showed the opening of a railway connecting Qinghai province and the Tibet autonomous region.

At present, China operates more than 131,000 km of track. That figure includes more than 29,000 km of high-speed rail, two-thirds of the global total.

Last year, China invested more than 338 billion yuan ($49 billion) in the construction of 26 new railways and opened new lines totaling 4,683 km, most of them high speed.

Nearly 3.4 billion trips were made on Chinese rail lines last year. Every day, an average of 5.5 million people use the nation's high-speed trains, accounting for nearly 60 percent of daily users of the country's rail network.

The State-owned rail car manufacturer CRRC Corp, the world's largest train maker, has started developing a new generation of bullet trains that will operate at 400 km per hour.

In addition, CRRC is designing two types of maglev trains－a 600 km/h high-speed version and a 200 km/h medium-speed version. Designers said the company expects to put them into service sometime around 2021.

According to a plan issued by the National Development and Reform Commission, China's rail network will be extended to 175,000 km by the end of 2025, including 38,000 km of high-speed railways.