Premier Wen Jiabao said on Thursday that scientific planning, reasonable designing and orderly development are principles for the country's future railway construction.
Construction of the railways should not be solely based on speed, but be integrated with quality, efficiency and safety, and safety always being the first priority, Wen said.
China's 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-2015) for the country's development has put forward clearly that railway construction, like construction efforts in other areas, should focus more on the structural adjustment and development pattern transformation.
"The train crash has reminded us to attach more importance to the safety of the railways, especially the high-speed railway," he said.
The layout and design for China's railways should take the country's railway network as a whole into consideration, and efforts should also be made to streamline the networks of the railways, highways as well as waterborne and airborne traffic, he said.
Wen made the remarks while speaking to press at the site of the deadly train crash near Wenzhou of eastern Zhejiang Province.