The reform and opening-up policy adopted in 1978 ushered in a new stage of social and economic development, bringing about the rapid development of transport. The Chinese government prioritized transport development, increased pertinent policy support, made pioneering attempts to open wider the transport market and establish social financing mechanisms, and reversed the adverse situation that transport was unable to match social and economic development.

China implemented the contract responsibility system in railway operation; issued three policies for supporting highway development, namely, raising highway maintenance fee levied on highway users, collecting vehicle purchase tax, and building highways with loans and repaying the loans with tolls. Highway construction and water transport engineering projects started to adopt public bidding. Ports were the first to be opened up to the outside world, and sea transport was the first sector to go global. Civil aviation began to operate as an enterprise, and an air transport market took shape. The postal services management system was reformed, Express Mail Service (EMS) was set up, and postal savings services were resumed. Investment in transport development was increased and non-government capital was attracted to go into transport infrastructure construction. In 1988 the Shanghai-Jiading Expressway was opened to traffic, the first expressway on China's mainland.

In 1992 China set the reform goal of establishing a socialist market economic system. Reform and opening-up efforts were furthered in transport while the development of various modes of transport achieved breakthrough progress. Since 1997, it has raised its average railway speed six times as a result of large-scale construction. A plan was made to build a transport framework where highways, waterways and ports play the major role, and put in place an advanced transport support system. A goal was set to accelerate related construction. China began to collect civil airport construction fees, and set up a civil airport infrastructure construction fund, a railway construction fund and an inland water transport construction fund in succession. To address the Financial Crisis starting in Southeast Asia, China implemented proactive fiscal policies to speed up investment in highway construction, which spurred the emergence of large-scale expressway construction. Around that time, the country implemented the strategy of developing the western regions, and enhanced the construction of railways, highways, airports and major gas pipelines there. It set the goal of "building asphalt and cement roads in rural areas to facilitate urbanization," bringing a new upsurge of rural road construction. China furthered the reform of the port management system and accelerated the construction of ports. It separated postal services and telecommunications services, and government functions and enterprise operation in postal services, promoting modern postal services integrating information flow, capital flow and logistics.

The Chinese government issued the Medium- and Long-Term Railway Network Plan, National Expressways Network Plan and related programs, while vigorously improving basic transport public service capacity, urban and rural passenger transport, urban public transport and transport safety emergency rescue. In 2008 China's Ministry of Transport (MOT) was established, and efforts were made to put all management of transport by air, water and land, as well as postal services under the ministry. The same year, the Beijing-Tianjin Intercity Railway was opened to traffic, marking the start of China's high-speed rail era.