The Chinese mainland is "actively planning" a cross-Taiwan Straits rail line linking Beijing with Taipei, Minister of Railways Liu Zhijun said Wednesday.

The rail via Fuzhou, capital of Fujian Province, will be part of the network that connects the mainland and Taiwan, said Liu.

The cross-Straits railway network, with its hub in Fujian Province, may also cover the inland cities of Kunming in the southwest and Hefei in the east, according to the plan.

In a meeting with Liu on the sidelines of the annual session of the National People's Congress, Lu Zhangong, chief of the Fujian Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China, also proposed to plan a rail line that links Xiamen in Fujian and Kaohsiung in Taiwan.

The ministry has been boosting railway construction in the coastal province of Fujian, planning 6,000 km of rails inside the province by 2015 with a total investment of 350 billion yuan (about 51.5 billion U.S. dollars).

The railway network is expected to lay a foundation of transport infrastructure for the "cross-Straits economic zone" proposed by some members of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference during their annual session.

The zone may cover Fujian, provinces around it and Taiwan, according to the proposal.

The shortest distance between Xiamen and Taiwan is only 1,800 meters.

Fujian has started construction on a high-speed rail line linking provincial capital Fuzhou and Xiamen. The rail line is scheduled to be completed at the end of July and put into use in November.

The line would cut the trip from Fuzhou to Xiamen to one and a half hours, at least an hour shorter than the current expressway alternative.

The mainland and Taiwan signed a series of landmark agreements on direct air, sea transport and postal services last November. Such direct links formally started on Dec. 15.

(Xinhua News Agency March 12, 2009)