China's National Railway Administration has issued its railway science and technology innovation plan for the 15th Five-Year Plan period, covering 2026 to 2030. Published on October 12, the plan sets out research priorities ranging from faster trains and more automated construction to artificial intelligence across ticketing, freight and maintenance.
Its most visible goal concerns speed. The plan calls for basic research on wheel-rail wear, pantograph and catenary interaction and signaling at 400 km/h, and for a low-drag, low-noise, low-axle-load design suited to batch operation at that speed, producing a CR450 family of trains. A maintenance and overhaul system for 400 km/h trains is also on the list.
On maglev, the wording is careful. The administration says it will steadily and in an orderly way advance research on 600 km/h high-speed maglev technology and test validation of key technologies for domestic production. The plan describes research and testing rather than construction of a line.
Passenger service is another focus. The plan calls for upgrading the 12306 platform from a ticketing tool into an intelligent service that covers an entire journey, with personalized multimodal trip planning. It also lists research on contactless station entry using facial recognition and edge computing, along with smart passenger-flow sensing and capacity allocation.
For freight, the 95306 platform is to become a national railway logistics service platform supporting single-document multimodal transport across rail, road and water. Planned equipment includes freight trains running at 120 to 200 km/h, gauge-adaptive freight wagons and lightweight cold-chain containers. The plan also mentions research into combining drones with high-speed rail for last-mile delivery.
On communications and computing, the administration wants deeper use of 5G-R for remote equipment maintenance, BeiDou across the full railway chain, early research into 6G applications, and a satellite-ground network using low-orbit broadband satellites. It plans a railway industry large model, at least 20 high-quality industry datasets and more than 20 typical AI application scenarios.
By 2030, the plan targets at least 100 major research projects, breakthroughs in at least 100 key technologies, about 30 new industry innovation bases, and at least 20 demonstration projects, including systems engineering for 400 km/h operation.
SEE ALSO: Space Solar Power Station Written into China's 15th Five-Year Plan