China started on Friday to build two new railway lines in Fujian Province on the southeastern coast, which will slash travel times between the coastal and inland areas.

One of the railways starts in Xiamen, a port city facing Taiwan, and runs 502.4 kilometers southwest along the coast to Shenzhen, a boom city in the southern Guangdong Province.

Upon its completion in 2011, the railway will allow trains to travel at up to 200 kilometers per hour, and a journey between the two cities will take less than three hours compared with the current 11.

The 41.7 billion yuan (5.6 billion U.S. dollars) construction cost will be shared by the Ministry of Railways, and the Fujian and Guangdong provincial governments, China Daily reported on Saturday.

The second major rail project launched on Friday was a 603.6-km railway linking Nanchang, capital of the central Jiangxi Province, with Fujian Province, with terminals in both Fuzhou and Putian.

The 51.8 billion yuan railway will open to traffic in 2012, "the first modern railway" to link Fujian Province with the hinterland, said Yu Kaiyang, director of the provincial railway construction office.

He said the new line will cut traveling distance between Fujian and Jiangxi by at least 17 km.

(Xinhua News Agency November 24, 2007)