China is now the proud possessor of the world's longest high-speed railway network, with a combined track length of 7,531 kilometers, where trains could soon thunder along at close to 600 kilometers per hour, the Ministry of Railways and train manufacturers said Tuesday.

The latest Chinese high-speed record was set Friday by a CRH-380A train, which reached a national record of 486.1 km per hour, during a test run on the Beijing-Shanghai railway route.

The country's manufacturers seem positive that their trains will soon snap at the heels of the 574.8 km per hour world speed record set by France in 2007, an anonymous source with CSR Corporation, formerly known as the China South Locomotive and Rolling Stock Corporation, told the Xinhua News Agency Tuesday, during the seventh World Congress on High Speed Rail held in Beijing.

The event, co-hosted by the Ministry of Railways and the International Union of Railways (UIC), was organized by the China Academy of Railway Sciences, and is being held outside Europe for the first time. The congress started Tuesday and will run until Thursday.