Means of transport and technology have been improved. By the end of 2015, all railway trunk lines had realized diesel and electric locomotive traction; types and structures of passenger and freight transport vehicles had been upgraded and updated. Civil automobiles numbered 172.28 million; highway passenger and freight transport vehicles in operation totaled 14.73 million; the average tonnage of freight transport vehicles increased from 6.3 to 7.5 tons; the proportion of special-use freight vehicles (including trailers) rose from 5.1 percent to 27.2 percent; passenger transport vehicles in operation have become advanced and comfortable, while freight transport vehicles have become larger and have been specified for various uses. Water transport vessels numbered 166,000; ocean cargo fleet had a total capacity of 160 million tons; inland waterway freight transport vessels had an average tonnage of more than 800 tons; the rate of standard ship types operating in navigable waters of high-grade waterways reached 50 percent; transport vessels have been developed towards large-size, specialized-use and standard types. Civil aviation had 2,650 registered planes, while general aviation had 1,904. Postal services had 244,000 transport vehicles and 71 cargo planes for domestic express delivery.

An efficient safety regulation and maritime emergency aid system has been established. China has established and improved the inter-ministerial joint conference system for maritime search and rescue, and major marine oil spill emergency disposal. It has also improved its maritime search and rescue efforts and increased the number of volunteers. Overall, China has preliminarily built an extensive, prompt and efficient system of waterway transport safety regulation and maritime emergency support.

Technology Innovation and Application

China leads the world in infrastructure construction. China’s technologies for high-speed, alpine, plateau and heavy-haul railways have reached the world’s advanced level, while high-speed railways have become a symbol of made-in-China and going-global products. Railway and highway construction technologies have overcome world-level geological challenges such as plateau permafrost, and expansive soil and desert. The construction of the Qinghai-Tibet Highway and Qinghai-Tibet Railway has been completed and they have been opened to traffic. A number of world-class large bridges and tunnels have been built with globally advanced construction technologies. China’s key construction technologies for offshore deep-water ports, improved technologies for large estuary waterways and long waterways, and construction technologies for large-scale airports are leading the world. The Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge, Yangshan Port Container Terminal, Yangtze Estuary Deepwater Channel Improvement Project, and other major construction projects have been carried out.

Equipment manufacturing has made rapid progress. High-performance railway equipment technologies with proprietary intellectual property rights, represented by high-speed railways and high-power locomotives, have reached the advanced world level, with some of them leading the world. New-energy road transport equipment has realized preliminary industrialization. Feeder liners, general aviation aircraft and helicopters independently developed by China have been put into use, and the C919 airliner has rolled off the assembly line, making China one of the few countries capable of developing large airliners independently. China’s manufacturing technologies for large, specialized equipment for terminal loading and unloading, special marine engineering machinery vessels and complete sets of container transport equipment are world-leaders, while its 300-m saturation diving technology has achieved a breakthrough. Sorting technologies in postal services, including optical character recognition (OCR), video complement and address check via bar code have reached the world’s top level.