JINAN, Dec. 8 -- A new high-speed railway route was launched on Friday, linking the eastern Chinese city of Jinan and the central Chinese city of Zhengzhou.

With a total length of 407 km, the Jinan-Zhengzhou High-speed Railway boasts a designed speed of 350 km per hour, cutting the fastest running time of bullet trains between the two cities by 89 minutes to 103 minutes.

Jinan and Zhengzhou are the capital cities of the provinces of Shandong and Henan, respectively.

The railway is a part of China's high-speed rail network that centers around the eight main vertical lines linking the north and south and eight horizontal lines connecting the east and west.

By 2022, China had 42,000 km of operational high-speed railway, ranking first in the world, and the length of high-speed rail regularly operating at 350 km per hour neared 3,200 km as of June 2022.