At 9:10 on June 15, the G875 intelligent "Fuxing" flagship train, which had just departed from Wuhan Station shortly before, had its speed locked at 352 kilometers per hour. Three hours and 24 minutes later, this train from Wuhan to Shenzhen North arrived at Guangzhou South Station, marking the full implementation of high-standard operation of "Fuxing" EMU trains at 350 kilometers per hour across the entire Beijing-Guangzhou High-Speed Railway, further compressing travel times between multiple cities along and around the route.

"Fuxing" and "Hexie" trains speed north and south like dragons, bringing Hubei into the high-speed rail era. A "3-hour economic circle" centered on Wuhan and radiating to the southeast, northwest, and center of the country is taking shape. The flow of people, logistics, capital, and information driven by the railway, along with the boom in tourism, investment, and industrial transfer, is accelerating the pace of economic activity along the railway and propelling Hubei, Hunan, and other regions onto the fast track of development.

　　Expansion of the Urban Economy

Starting at 0:00 on June 15, railways nationwide officially implemented a new train operating schedule. After this round of schedule adjustment, the entire Beijing-Guangzhou High-Speed Railway achieved high-standard operation at 350 kilometers per hour, with overall transport capacity increasing by 4.2%.

Zheng Jiajian, who works in Wuhan, has deep feelings about the rapid development of China's railways. As a railway enthusiast, he has purchased and collected more than 10 editions of train timetables from secondhand bookstores and collectibles markets. According to the 1969 edition of the "National Railway Passenger Train Timetable" in his collection, in the 1960s, a through express train from Beijing to Guangzhou took more than 40 hours. "From more than 40 hours to today's more than 7 hours, we have strived for over 50 years, truly one step at a time," Zheng Jiajian said.

After more than 50 years of development, Wuhan has concentrated its efforts on advancing the construction of national trunk lines, intercity railways, and freight railways, successively completing the Beijing-Guangzhou and Shanghai-Wuhan-Chengdu rapid railways, the Wuhan-Jiujiang passenger dedicated line, the Wuhan-Shiyan high-speed railway, and the Wuhan-Huangshi, Wuhan-Huanggang (Huangmei), Wuhan-Xianning, Wuhan-Xiaogan, and Wuhan-Xiantao intercity railways.

"The acceleration of railway construction will further optimize the regional development pattern," said a relevant person in charge of China Railway Wuhan Group Co., Ltd. For Hubei, the areas covered by the high-speed rail network centered on Wuhan are continuously expanding, which will not only strengthen the transport strength and urban functions of Xiangyang and Yichang, the province's sub-central cities, but also strongly support regional growth poles such as Huangshi, Shiyan, Jingzhou, Jingmen, and Huanggang, helping more counties (cities, districts) enter the "fast lane" of economic development. The strategic development pattern of "one main center, two sub-centers, and multiple poles" is gradually emerging.

Data shows that after the high-standard operation of the Wuhan-Guangzhou High-Speed Railway, the overall transport capacity of the section is expected to increase by more than 8%, equivalent to adding more than 10 high-speed trains per day between Wuhan and Guangzhou and 15,000 additional seats. Wuhan's status as a railway hub will become even more prominent.

Since it opened in 2009, the Wuhan-Guangzhou High-Speed Railway has rapidly expanded the economic and living radius of the Pearl River Delta region, the Changsha-Zhuzhou-Xiangtan urban agglomeration, and the Wuhan metropolitan area. Today, passenger flows on the Wuhan-Guangzhou High-Speed Railway have gradually expanded from the initial mid-to-high-end business and tourism passengers and short-distance tourist flows to ordinary consumers, migrant workers, students, and intercity family-visiting passengers traveling between cities. With the high-standard operation of the Wuhan-Guangzhou High-Speed Railway, the 8 high-speed rail stations in cities along the line have added 23 trains heading toward Guangzhou, and Changsha South has added 10 trains to and from Guangzhou, covering the morning, midday, and evening time slots.

The richness of passenger flows has spurred the "high-speed rail + culture and tourism" trend in cities along the line. In the nearly 15 years since the Wuhan-Guangzhou High-Speed Railway opened, the number of tourists from the Pearl River Delta to Wuhan, Yueyang, Changsha, Hengyang, Chenzhou, Shaoguan, and Qingyuan has increased by more than 50% compared with before the line opened.

　　Two-Way Integration of Industry and City

As China's first long-distance high-speed rail trunk line, the Wuhan-Guangzhou High-Speed Railway is one of the busiest passenger lines in the country. It has not only eased passenger transport pressure and improved freight capacity, but also greatly advanced industrial transfer in the Pearl River Delta region, with cities along the high-speed rail in northern Guangdong and Hunan and Hubei continuing to attract investment booms.

Industry is the most direct indicator. Over the past 15 years, cities along the Guangdong-Hunan-Hubei high-speed rail have undertaken more than 15,000 industrial transfer projects from the Pearl River Delta, with total investment exceeding 1 trillion yuan.

"Only with industry can there be urban development. A huge industrial economic belt has risen along the Wuhan-Guangzhou High-Speed Railway, and high-speed rail new towns, high-speed rail new districts, and industrial parks are springing up like bamboo shoots after rain," said Zeng Xing, a professor at Hunan University of Science and Technology.

Riding the momentum of the Wuhan-Guangzhou High-Speed Railway, the number of enterprises from Guangdong Province investing in Wuhan has increased significantly. A group of high-tech enterprises in manufacturing and biomedicine, including TCL, Gree, ZTE, Huawei, BGI, and Neptune, have established operations in Wuhan. Over the past 15 years, Wuhan has attracted more than 300 billion yuan in domestic investment, one-third of which came from the Pearl River Delta region.

Xianning is only more than 20 minutes from Wuhan by high-speed rail. Discussing the development of recent years, Xia Fuqing, vice mayor of Xianning, told reporters that more than 75% of the investment projects in Xianning High-Tech Zone were built by outside investors, among which investors from the Pearl River Delta accounted for the largest share.

Thanks to the intermediary role and "siphon effect" of the Wuhan-Guangzhou High-Speed Railway, the "vacating the cage for new birds" effect in the Pearl River Delta region has become prominent. Today, industries such as drones, smartphones, and robots have settled in Guangzhou and Shenzhen and continue to grow and expand into emerging advantage industries. More than two-thirds of the Fortune Global 500 companies have chosen to establish headquarters in Guangzhou and Shenzhen. The three major free trade zones of Nansha in Guangzhou, Shekou in Shenzhen, and Hengqin in Zhuhai will attract more and more advantageous industries to settle there.

Looking along the Wuhan-Guangzhou High-Speed Railway, the structural adjustment, layout, and planning of all 15 cities have without exception chosen to connect with high-speed rail. The value of the areas where high-speed rail stations are located and their surroundings is increasingly apparent, becoming new landmarks for the development of their cities. "High-speed rail new towns" are rising one after another and beginning to take shape.

Changsha South High-Speed Railway Station is the "golden intersection" of two north-south trunk lines: the Beijing-Guangzhou High-Speed Railway and the Shanghai-Kunming High-Speed Railway. China Unicom Central South Research Institute has settled in the high-speed rail new town section of the Yuhua block of the Changsha area of the China (Hunan) Pilot Free Trade Zone, becoming a landmark and leading project of the "Liuyang River Digital Valley." Wang Zhuo, Party secretary and director of the Yuhua District Industry and Information Technology Bureau of Changsha, introduced that in the future this area will gather 100 leading talents, 1,000 R&D talents, and 3,000 scientific and technological innovation talents, with cumulative revenue exceeding 10 billion yuan, and will drive the clustered development of a number of digital enterprises (projects) in big data, blockchain, and the metaverse, creating a digital industry cluster with core competitiveness and radiating driving force.

　　Concentration of Resource Factors

It is not only the Beijing-Guangzhou High-Speed Railway that has brought earth-shaking changes to the areas along the line. Up to now, China has completed safe-standard demonstration lines for the Beijing-Shanghai High-Speed Railway, the Beijing-Tianjin Intercity Railway, the Beijing-Zhangjiakou High-Speed Railway, the Chengdu-Chongqing High-Speed Railway, the Fuzhou-Xiamen High-Speed Railway, and the Shanghai-Nanjing Riverside High-Speed Railway, successfully achieving normalized high-standard operation at 350 kilometers per hour. High-speed rail has become a high-powered "booster" for economic development along the lines.

On June 14, 400 students from the Zhiyin campus of Wuhan Erqiao Middle School took the high-speed rail to the Zhaojun Village study base in Xingshan County, Hubei, to experience the charm of Hanfu and understand Zhaojun culture. "Last year we received a total of 13,000 students coming for study tours," introduced Zhou Jing, head of the study base.

In June 2022, the Zhengzhou-Chongqing High-Speed Railway opened, bringing Xingshan County fully into the "350" high-speed rail era. Over the past two years, the cumulative number of passengers traveling through Xingshan Station has reached 1.25 million. Xingshan County has seized the high-speed rail opportunity and deeply tapped its existing cultural and natural resources, not only attracting tourists from all over the country to Zhaojun's hometown, but also continuously heating up the local study-tour economy.

"At the busiest times there are more than 1,000 people a day, most of them students coming from Wuhan by high-speed rail," Zhou Jing introduced. Xingshan County has carefully developed premium study-tour routes such as Zhaojun Village and the Gaolan National Defense Education Base. In 2023, the number of study-tour travelers in the county reached 35,000, a record high.

The Zhengzhou-Chongqing High-Speed Railway, a high-speed railway with a maximum speed of 350 kilometers per hour that departs from Xiangyang East Station in Hubei Province and runs directly to the Sichuan-Chongqing region, not only allows passengers to take in the beautiful mountains and rivers of Henan, Hubei, and Chongqing within a single day, but also ends the history of no high-speed rail access in places such as Shennongjia, Nanzhang, Baokang, Badong, and Xingshan. It has had a profound impact on promoting the concentration of production resources along the line and adjusting regional industrial structures.

On the evening of June 16, the Tangcheng Scenic Area in Xiangyang was bustling with visitors, with 400 performers dancing gracefully. Last year, the scenic area received more than 2 million tourists, a record high. Yuan Xiaoning, director of the Xiangyang Culture and Tourism Bureau, said that in 2023 the city's tourist reception reached 100 million person-times for the first time, with a growth rate ranking among the top in the province.

Convenient transportation has driven the continuous concentration of resource factors such as people, logistics, and capital in Xiangyang. A large number of leading enterprises such as OCT and BYD have settled there, the "144" industrial cluster is developing rapidly, total industrial output value is advancing toward 1 trillion yuan, and regional GDP has jumped from 100 billion yuan to more than 500 billion yuan, achieving a "four-level leap."

At 15:20 on June 15, as train G6079 slowly left the platform, the high-speed rail from Zhangjiajie to Hong Kong was officially opened, "connecting" four 5A-level scenic areas in the western Hunan region of Hubei and opening a major corridor for opening up to the outside world.

"The opening of the direct high-speed rail to Hong Kong not only drives the flow of production factors, but also helps the western Hunan region further improve the quality of attracting foreign investment and foreign trade," said Yang Xiuyou, a fourth-level researcher at the Xiangxi Prefecture Commerce Bureau. At the same time, the high-speed train also stops along the way at economic heavyweights such as Guangzhou, Humen, and Shenzhen, which means that what western Hunan embraces is not just Hong Kong, but the entire Greater Bay Area.

Sun Yibing, a member of the Standing Committee of the Hunan Provincial Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and chairman of Hong Kong Hengdeli Investment (Group) Co., Ltd., said that since the high-speed rail from Hong Kong to Changsha opened, Changsha has become a popular tourist destination for Hong Kong people traveling "north," mainly because Changsha has rich tourism resources and distinctive cuisine. "I believe that with the opening of the high-speed rail from Zhangjiajie to Hong Kong, the western Hunan region will also become a popular tourist destination for Hong Kong people traveling 'north.'"