Transport and infrastructure in China
Our listing of the primary types of transport compares the infrastructure of China with the average of all countries in Asia. The main traffic and transport routes are in good condition, but do not reach the level of the leading industrial nations.In terms of the length of its rail network, China ranks 108th in the world with 0.05 meters per inhabitant. In total, the rail network is 68,141 kilometers long. Freight traffic on the rails most recently totaled 3.018 trillion tons and kilometers traveled. Passenger traffic reached 946.50 billion passenger-kilometers in 2021.
The waterways listed refer to inland traffic on rivers and canals. The number of ports includes those located on the 14,500 km of coastline. In 2021, about 262.61 million freight containers were transported.
› Airports in China
Back to overview: China
Road traffic
The network of roads and highways has a total length of 5.20 million km. For each of the country's 1.43 billion inhabitants, this corresponds to 3.65 meters. This puts China in 131st place in the global ranking. However, the country's size and population density of around 149 inhabitants per km² must also be taken into account. Countries with fewer inhabitants in the same or even larger area naturally achieve quite different values here and have to connect remote areas to the transport network despite a smaller population.With an average of 254509 traffic fatalities per year (2013 - 2019), road traffic in China is considered rather mixed. This corresponds to 18.2 accident fatalities per 100,000 inhabitants per year. By comparison, this figure is 12.3 in the USA and 17.0 worldwide.
In China, traffic drives on the right-hand side of the road, i.e. people drive in the right-hand lane and overtake on the left. Oncoming traffic comes toward you on the left side. This regulation was enforced on July 13th, 1946. Regionally, this also applied before, now it exists for all parts of the country. Here you can also find an overview of all countries with left-hand traffic.
China | |||
| total | per 1 mio inhabitants | per km² | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Roadways | 5,200,000 km | 3,647.41 km | 543.77 m |
| Railroads | 68,100 km | 47.80 km | 7.13 m |
| Waterways | 110,000 km | 77.16 km | 11.50 m |
| Commercial harbors | 6,662 | 4.67 | 0.001 |
| Airports | 214 | 0.15 | 0.022 |
Asia | |||
| total | per 1 mio inhabitants | per km² | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Roadways | 16,613,000 km | 3,524.24 km | 519.50 m |
| Railroads | 280,000 km | 59.41 km | 8.76 m |
| Waterways | 260,300 km | 55.21 km | 8.14 m |
| Commercial harbors | 45,998 | 9.76 | 0.001 |
| Airports | 1,012 | 0.21 | 0.000 |
Data sources used
• Global Health Observatory Data Repository (World Health Organization)• UNCTAD
• Internation Union of Railways (UIC)
• CIA Factbook
• OECD Statistics
• Wikipedia (german)
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