Infrastructure Development of West China Speeds UpMinister of the State Development and Planning Commission Zeng Peiyan said Saturday that China has increased its investment in the infrastructural construction of the country's vast western areas.Zeng told the National People's Congress Standing Committee, the increased investment aims to lay solid foundations for the implementation of China's ambitious strategy for developing the west. The pace of infrastructure construction has been sped up this year," he said. Of the 78 large and medium-sized projects invested in by the central government in the west, 42 will be put into production, and the total input from the government will reach 32.6 billion yuan (about 4 billion U.S. dollars) this year, Zeng said. By the end of this year, more than 1,159 kilometers of high-voltage electric wire, 3.08 million tones of crude oil production capacity and 249 kilometers of super highway will be added to the western provinces and autonomous regions, he said. Ten major projects, which started this year, are also making headway, he said, noting that the Xi'an-Nanjing Railway, Chengdu-Huaihua Railway, Xianyang Airport in Xi'an, Dunhuang Airport in Gansu, Chongqing Light Rail Flyover and the schemes to recover forests and grassland from farm land have been approved by the central government to commence construction. The project to siphon natural gas from Tarim Basin of Xinjiang Autonomous Region to Shanghai, and transmitting electricity from west to east are under preparation, as well as the railway project to link Tibet to the inland areas. |
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