China plans to build five urban railway lines spanning a total length of 182.5 km in Shenyang starting in the year 2001, local officials said.

The network will be composed of underground, above-ground and elevated railways. The first phase, with a total length of 22.2 km and investment of 6.51 billion yuan (781.2 million US dollars), is expected to be finished in 2006, said the officials.

The city, an old industrial base in Liaoning Province, will make good use of its domestic resources to build the network, with over 70 percent of the trains, and more than 80 percent of the accessory machinery to be domestic products.

Officials say that they have negotiated with over 30 financial groups and enterprises both at home and abroad on financing issues and engineering technique exchanges for the project.