The first China-made bullet train designed to run at 300 kilometers per hour has completed a test run and will be in service between Beijing and Tianjin in early August, a railway official said on Sunday.
"A train prototype rolled off the production line in December and has completed a test run," said Shao Liping, director of the railway authority in Nanning, capital of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.
The new train is expected to be running along a 117-km intercity railway beginning Aug. 1, a week before the opening of the Beijing Olympic Games.
It will reduce the travel time between Beijing and Tianjin to around 30 minutes from the current 70 to 80 minutes, said Shao on the sidelines of the annual session of China's parliament.
Shao said the train, the latest model in the China Railway High-speed (CRH) Series, will be produced jointly by manufacturers in Qingdao of the eastern Shandong Province, and Tangshan of the northern Hebei Province.
In the meantime, Shao said Ministry of Science and Technology and Ministry of Railways are carrying out research on a 350-km-per-hour train for the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway that has been under discussion for years.
At present, China's fastest self-developed trains run at a service speed up to 250 km per hour. Those trains, which debuted last April, link Beijing with Harbin, Shanghai and Guangzhou.
(Xinhua News Agency, March 10, 2008)