A leading Chinese official of communications says a network
featuring land transport links connecting China and the Association
of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) via Pan Pearl River Delta Region
(PPRDR) of China will be completed by 2020.
Weng Mengyong, deputy minister of the Chinese Ministry of
Communications, believes the transport linking network will help
bring China closer to the international market in an efficient
manner.
Weng was in Kunming, capital of southwest China's Yunnan Province, attending a forum featuring
regional cooperation and development of PPRDR.
PPRDR encompasses Fujian, Jiangxi, Hunan, Guangdong, Hainan,
Sichuan, Guizhou, Yunnan provinces and Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous
Region, as well as Hong Kong and Macao special administrative
regions, which have one fifth of China's territory, and one third
of the country's population.
China shares land border with Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam, all
member states of ASEAN, at Yunnan Province and Guangxi Zhuang
Autonomous Region and there are now 11 trade ports along the
borderline.
China also has a deep-rooted relationship with ASEAN because of
one international river known as Mekong, or Lancang River in
Chinese, which has bound Cambodia, China, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand,
and Vietnam together.
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao last July pledged expediting
infrastructure building as one of the seven recommendations he
listed to advance a stronger cooperation in the Greater Mekong
Subregion (GMS).
China, Laos and Thailand have agreed to build a 1,818 km
international highway which will start from Kunming, capital of
Yunnan, and end at Bangkok of Thailand.
And construction has completed on 60 percent of this
international highway's Chinese section that starts from Kunming
and stops at Mohan, an important trade port on the Sino-Laotian
border. The remainder of the section will be finished by late
2007.
The Chinese parts of two more highways connecting Kunming to
Hanoi of Vietnam and to Yangon of Myanmar will be finished by late
2007 and will be upgraded to freeways in 2010.
PPRDR highway network can be expanded into ASEAN via the three
main international highways: the Sino-Myanmar highway
(Yangon-Mandalay-Kunming), the Thailand-Laos-China highway, and the
Sino-Vietnamese highway (Hai Phone-Hanoi-Kunming), according to Xu
Rongkai, governor of Yunnan.
In the meantime, China is also stepping up construction of a
railway scheme that links up China and ASEAN via Yunnan.
A feasibility study has completed for construction of the China
section of the proposed Pan-Asian Railway that will run from
Singapore, through Malaysia, Thailand and Myanmar before reaching
China's Yunnan Province. The new 340-km railway section will
connect Dali, a well-known scenic site in Yunnan Province,
southwest China, to Ruili, another Yunnan town on the Sino-Myanmar
border.
The feasibility study calls for a construction budget for
Dali-Ruili railway section of 10 billion yuan (US$1.23 billion),
said Bai Enpei, secretary of Yunnan Provincial Committee of the
Communist Party of China. He said construction work on the section
could begin soon.
The proposed 2,600 km-long Pan-Asian Railway will start in
Singapore,pass through Kuala Lumpua in Malaysia, Thailand's capital
Bangkok, Yangon in Myanmar, and terminate in Kunming, capital of
Yunnan.
Highways linking up Nanning, capital of Guangxi, Yunnan's close
neighbor, to Guangxi's land border ports and seaports with Vietnam
have also been under swift construction. The nine Chinese mainland
areas of Pan Pearl River Delta Region did US$46.24 billion worth of
trade last year with ASEAN -- namely Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore,
Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar and the
Philippines -- a rise of 14 percent from 2004. In accordance with
an agreement concerning Sino-ASEAN Preferential Treatment, tariffs
totaling US$59.93 million were exempted from levy over US$516
million worth of commodities imported from ASEAN last year.
(Xinhua News Agency June 11, 2006)