The 1,165km Changsha-Kunming railway will start construction this year, according to the State Council Go West office. The project will connect Hunan, Guizhou and Yunnan provinces and there will be 25 stations along the route. Trains will be able to run at a speed of 250kph. It will take five years to complete and will reduce the journey time between Changsha and Kunming from the current 22.5 hours to just four hours.

The line will form part of the Shanghai-Kunming high-speed railway, one of the four major east-west transport arteries that the Ministry of Railway is building as part of the national high-speed rail network. Originally, the MOR planned a Hangzhou-Changsha high-speed line, but it decided to extend it westward to Kunming and eastward to connect with the Shanghai-Hangzhou high-speed railway that is under construction and expected to start operation by the end of this year.

The Changsha-Hangzhou section via Nanchang started construction in May and is expected to begin operation by 2013. Once the entire 2,066km Shanghai-Kunming line is finished, the train journey between the two cities will be slashed from the current 42 hours to about 10 hours. The existing line will be freed up for freight.