We investigate by numerical simulation the compression of subpicosecond pulses in two-dimensional nonlinear photonic crystal (PC) waveguides. The compression originates from the generation of high-order optical solitons through the interplay of the huge group-velocity dispersion and the enhanced self-phase modulation in nonlinear PC waveguides.Both the formation of Bragg grating solitons and gap solitons can lead to efficient pulse compression. The compression factors under different excitation power densities and the optimum length for subpicosecond pulse compression have been determined. As a compressor, the total length of the nonlinear PC waveguide is only ten micrometres and therefore can be easily incorporated into PC integrated circuits.