The northern part of the Guangdong Province section of the
Beijing-Zhuhai freeway, a north-south trunk line, has been finished
after more than four years of efforts.
The completed section, with a length of 109.9 kilometers, begins at
Xiaotang, a juncture between central China's Hunan Province and
Guangdong to the south, and ends at Gantang in Shaoguan City,
Guangdong.
This part of the freeway has four lanes and was built with a budget
of 5.66 billion yuan (US$682 million), of which, US$200 million is
covered by World Bank loans, said Lin Yigong, an official in charge
of managing the Xiaotang-Gantang freeway construction.
Workers have constructed 74 bridges and seven tunnels for the
northern Guangdong part of the freeway, which traverses complicated
mountain landscape.
A
panel of specialists organized by the Chinese Ministry of
Communications has assessed the completed northern part and
concluded that all the facilities built have met the design
requirements and 92 percent of them are of the highest quality.
The whole Beijing-Zhuhai Freeway begins from Beijing in north China
and ends at Zhuhai City of Guangdong Province. The route will cut
through Beijing Municipality and Hebei, Henan, Hubei, Hunan and
Guangdong provinces with a total length of 2,317 kilometers on
completion.
The finished northern part of the freeway in Guangdong will be of
great significance in promoting local economic development in the
northern mountainous areas of the province, one of the country's
economic powerhouses, said a local official.
(Xinhua News Agency March 26, 2003)