China's railway passenger traffic from January to September this year rose 9.2 percent year on year to 1.28 billion, largely due to the expansion of China's high-speed rail network, the Ministry of Railway (MOR) said Thursday.

The passenger traffic hike was driven by the rapid development of the country's high-speed rail network, said the ministry in a statement on its website.

China opened its first high-speed railway linking Wuhan in central China and Guangzhou in the south in December 2009. Since then, several more lines were put into service in 2010, including the Zhengzhou-Xi'an, Fuzhou-Xiamen, Nanchang-Jiujiang, and Shanghai-Nanjing high-speed rail links.

Railway cargo traffic also surged 12.1 percent from a year earlier to 2.72 billion tonnes from January to September, the MOR said.

(Xinhua News Agency October 15, 2010)