Proposals for two new railway links to Xiamen have been ratified by the National Development and Reform Commission, according to Shanghai Daily today.

One is a 493km link between Xiamen and Shenzhen which will allow passenger trains to run at 200 kilometers an hour and cost 24.75 billion yuan (US$3.06 billion) to build.

The other, a 171km link between Xiamen and Longyan, will cost 6 billion yuan and allow trains to travel at the same speed, Xinhua said.

With the ongoing construction of a railway linking Fuzhou and Xiamen, the approval to build the Xiamen-Shenzhen line is expected to make Xiamen a major center between the two big economic regions: Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta, Xinhua said, citing the Xiamen Development and Reform Commission.

The Xiamen-Longyan railway, which will connect to the Beijing-Kowloon railway, will boost the city's ties with inland cities, especially those in Fujian, Guangdong and Jiangxi provinces.

(Shanghai Daily January 4, 2006)