Monday, September 18, 2000, updated at 16:28(GMT+8)
Life
Grand Canal Capacity-expansion Project Started Construction
The ship-lock project of Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal in the section of Huai'an, Huaiyin of Jiangsu Province was formally launched on September 16.
The main artery of China's water transportation, the Grand Canal holds an extremely important position in China's inland water transport. The 669-km-long section in Jiangsu Province is the busiest and most profitable in terms of water transport with an annual freight volume reaching 200 million tons.
In recent years, along with economic development and the fast growth of freight volume, the transit capacity of the Grand Canal's ship-lock has obviously fallen short, becoming the bottleneck restricting water transport. To remedy this situation, the Jiangsu provincial government has listed the Grand Canal's capacity-expansion project as one of the province's five major traffic strategic works.