New railways with a total length of 5,200 kilometers will begin operation in 2013, the Ministry of Railways said on Thursday.

The ministry will invest 650 billion yuan ($104 billion) on railway infrastructure this year, Sheng Guangzu, minister of railways, told a national conference on railway work.

In 2012, an estimated 1.9 billion passenger journeys were made by train, an increase of 4.8 percent on 2011, he said.

A number of major high-speed railways were put into operation last year, including the world's first high-speed railway in an area with extremely low temperatures that runs through three provinces in Northeast China, and the 2,298-km Bejing-Guangzhou high-speed railway, the world's longest high-speed rail link.

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