The "fastest" train commercial service can be defined alternatively by a train's top speed or average trip speed. * The fastest train service measured by peak operational speed is the Shanghai maglev train which can reach . Due to the limited length of the Shanghai Maglev track (30 km)(18.6 mi), the maglev train's average trip speed is only . * The fastest train service measured by average trip speed from 2009 until 2011 was on the

Wuhan–Guangzhou high-speed railway The Wuhan–Guangzhou high-speed railway, also called the Wuguang high-speed railway and short for Beijing–Guangzhou–Shenzhen–Hong Kong high-speed railway, Wuhan–Guangzhou section, is a high-speed rail line, operated by China Railway Hi ...

, where from December 2009 until July 1, 2011, the CRH3/CRH2 coupled-train sets averaged on the route from

Wuhan Wuhan (, ; ; ) is the capital of Hubei, Hubei Province in the China, People's Republic of China. It is the largest city in Hubei and the most populous city in Central China, with a population of over eleven million, the List of cities in China ...

to Guangzhou North. However, on July 1, 2011 in order to save energy and reduce operating costs, the maximum speed of Chinese high-speed trains was reduced to 300 km/h, and the average speed of the fastest trains on the Wuhan-Guangzhou High-Speed Railway was reduced to . * After the speed reduction in 2011 the fastest services are found running between

Shijiazhuang Shijiazhuang (; ; Mandarin: ), formerly known as Shimen and romanized as Shihkiachwang, is the capital and most populous city of China’s North China's Hebei Province. Administratively a prefecture-level city, it is about southwest of Beijin ...

and Zhengzhou East where they achieve an average speed of in each direction in 2015. * 350 km/h operation was restored in late 2017 with the introduction of

Fuxing Hao Fuxing () (also known as the CR series EMU, or as the Fuxing Hao) is a series of high-speed and higher-speed EMU trains operated by China Railway High-speed (CRH) and developed by CRRC, which owns the independent intellectual property ri ...

trains for services running on the

Beijing–Shanghai high-speed railway The Beijing–Shanghai high-speed railway (or Jinghu high-speed railway, from its name in Mandarin) is a high-speed railway that connects two major economic zones in the People's Republic of China: the Bohai Economic Rim and the Yangtze River ...

in late 2017 making the CRH network once again having the fastest operating speed in the world. Several services to complete the journey between Shanghai Hongqiao and Beijing South in 4 hours and 24 min or with an average speed of making it the fastest train service measured by average trip speed in the world. *In 2019, the fastest timetabled start-to-stop runs between a station pair in the world are trains G17/G39 on the

averaging running non-stop between Beijing South to Nanjing South before continuing to other destinations. * The top speed attained by a non-maglev train in China is by a

CRH380BL The CRH3 Hexie (simplified Chinese: 和谐号; traditional Chinese: 和諧號; pinyin: Héxié Hào; literally: "Harmony") is a version of the Siemens Velaro high-speed train used in China on the Beijing–Tianjin intercity railway line, Wuhan ...

train on the

during a testing run on January 10, 2011.

Speed records of China's rolling stock (non-maglev)

Notes

References

{{Reflist, 2