"Opening the route will not only bring these cities closer, but will generate business for many different supporting facilities, promoting change in their growth patterns for years to come," said Wang Mengshu, an academic at the Chinese Academy of Engineering.
He said GDP growth in many of those areas had been independent of each other in the past, and relied mainly on real estate development and automobile sales, both of which had been run inefficiently while consuming massive resources.
Better access to fast railway links will now mean improved cargo transportation between factories in various cities, leading to greater expansion of support facilities, Wang said.
"Railways will indeed become a way to increase prosperity for so many industries," he added.
Wang calculates that a 600-billion-yuan ($96 billion) annual investment on railway construction could generate 3,000 kilometers of railway a year, which in turn could raise the country's annual GDP growth by 1.5 percentage points, and create more than 6 million jobs.
He said the country's tourism industry was likely to be one of those to most benefit from the high-speed rail development, and many in the sector have already been preparing to take advantage of the opportunities.
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