A bullet train pulls in at the Shandan Horse Ranch Railway Station of the Lanzhou-Xinjiang Railway in Shandan County, Zhangye City, northwest China's Gansu Province, Dec. 5, 2021.Photo:Xinhua

China Railway on Tuesday announced plans to build 3,300-kilometer in new rail tracks in 2022, around 1,900-kilometer of which will serve trains operating at normal speed, meaning the company will add 1,400 kilometers of high-speed rail tracks this year.

On a Tuesday conference, China Railway said it built 4,208 kilometers in new rail tracks with the fixed asset investment hitting 748.9 billion yuan ($117.86 billion) in 2021. The length included 2,168 kilometers high-speed rail tracks. 

The announcement sends the length of Chinese railways in operation surpassing 150,000 kilometers, including more than 40,000 kilometers of high-speed railways. 

Statistics by China Railway showed by the end of 2021, Fuxing bullet trains have run 1.358 billion kilometers, facilitating 1.37 billion journeys. 

Amid the coronavirus pandemic, over 15,000 China-Europe freight trains were dispatched in 2021, increasing 22 percent year-on-year. Around 1.46 million Twenty-foot Equivalent Units of goods were sent, up 29 percent compared with a year earlier.  

Looking ahead, China Railway expects to facilitate 3.038 billion travels this year, up 20 percent year-on-year. 

About 3.804 billion tons of goods are estimated to be delivered in 2022, growing 2.1 percent compared with the previous year. 

The news came after China's high-speed rail network hit a new milestone on Thursday, as it has reached the length of the equator at around 40,000 kilometers. 

The achievement further highlighted China's advantages in not just high-speed rail technology and construction but also its overall economic strength, which will help boost domestic as well as regional transport networks, experts noted.

At the end of 2021, the China-Laos Railway was put into operation, facilitating both countries to boost trade and logistics for China and ASEAN nations.