China's railway network has handled 4.28 billion passenger trips in the first 11 months of this year, up 6.6 percent year on year, marking a record high for the same period in history, the country's railway operator, China State Railway Group Co., Ltd. (CSRG), said on Tuesday.
Since the beginning of this year, the CSRG has focused on market demand and continued to increase passenger transport capacity. From January to November, the railway system ran an average of 11,258 passenger trains per day, an increase of 7.1 percent year on year.
The group also strengthened cross-border passenger services, steadily operating international trains between China and Vietnam, China and Russia, and China and Mongolia. During the 11-month period, the Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong High-Speed Railway and the China-Laos Railway made 28.94 million and 244,000 cross-border passenger trips, respectively, boosting cross-border tourism and effectively facilitating people-to-people exchanges and trade.
While expanding transport capacity, the company has also continuously upgraded its services. In the first 11 months, it introduced new ticketing products, including multi-ride tickets, period passes, and tourist multi-ride tickets. As winter arrived, it rolled out new offerings such as dedicated winter tourism trains, updated versions of tourist multi-ride tickets, and convenient ski-equipment travel services to meet seasonal travel demand and stimulate new consumption scenarios.
Starting Nov 27, 212 railway stations nationwide have launched 25 new versions of multi-ride tourist tickets, allowing passengers to freely select between two to 10 journey segments among designated origin and destination stations, making train travel more convenient.
Railway passenger trips rise 6.6 pct in first 11 months of 2025
China's first large-scale bio-methanol project was officially put into full operation on Tuesday, which marks the country's strategic transformation from hydrogen energy to advanced liquid fuel in the clean fuel sector.
The transition offers a practical and feasible de-carbonization solution for the global shipping industry.
In the initial phase, the project has an annual production capacity of 50,000 tons of green methanol with a purity of up to 99.9 percent.
The bio-methanol produced can be widely used as shipping fuel or in pharmaceutical, chemical and other industries.
At the heart of the large-scale methanol production line is the gasification island, a massive blue-gray unit where large quantities of biomass waste, such as tree bark and straw, are undergoing high-temperature gasification at over 1,000 degrees Celsius to produce the carbon monoxide and hydrogen required methanol synthesis.
The unit also features a "super vacuum cleaner" that captures more than 99 percent of the dust generated during the process, with the residual material repurposed as raw material for industries like cement manufacturing.
The project has also established the first comprehensive green methanol supply chain ecosystem in south China, encompassing production, storage, transportation and application.
At Zhanjiang Port in Guangdong Province, 30,000 cubic meters of methanol storage tanks and loading and unloading berths have been deployed at a deep-water terminal, which enables a complete "production-storage-transportation" cycle for bio-methanol within an hour.
It has built a "same-day delivery" network for ship bunkering in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, making it the nearest domestic location for exporting green methanol to international ports such as Singapore. The deployment has significantly reduced carbon footprint associated with methanol transportation, achieving end-to-end green and low-carbon operations.
"Green methanol is currently regarded as a sustainable alternative fuel with the greatest carbon emission reduction potential and strongest competitiveness for the shipping industry. Compared with traditional fossil fuels such as coal and oil, green methanol can reduce full-life-cycle carbon emissions by more than 85 percent," said Ren Jian, chief engineer at the CIMC Green Energy Low Carbon Technology Co., Ltd., the developer of the project.
China's first large-scale bio-methanol project enters full operation
