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Transportation: Blueprint of railways development

By Xin Dingding (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-11-17 13:50

And, there will be 9,700 km high-speed railways under construction by the end of this year, Minister Liu Zhijun said in January.

These railway projects are costly because of expensive land values, the need for many bridges, and precise, safe overall construction, Li Hong says.

In the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway, for example, 23.4 billion yuan of the investment (10.5 percent of the total) is going for the acquisition of land in seven coastal provinces and municipalities that it runs through, Cai Qinghua, the project company's chairman, said in an earlier interview with the Beijing-based Economic Daily.

The large proportion of bridges in the rail line also increases the cost, Li Hong said. As much as 80 percent of the Beijing-Shanghai rail link are for bridges to reduce the occupation of farmland, according to the ministry.

Liu Yu, a spokesman of the China Railway Construction Corporation Limited (CRCC), says that the project's spending on building the railway subgrade and laying rail tracks is 83.7 billion yuan, accounting for 38 percent of the total investment. CRCC has won half of the contract.

The rest of investment will be used to purchase the construction equipment, high-speed trains and the railway operation systems, he says.

"The project is sure to benefit local people and economy. We will buy a lot of construction materials, such as sand and gravel, from local suppliers, and we will hire many workers from local community," he says.

The CRCC hires 2 million migrant workers each year, 40 percent of who work for railway construction projects around the country, he says. "They are trained to master techniques like welding and driving bulldozers, and these skills help them find jobs after the railway project concludes there," he says.

The ministry spokesman Wang Yongping says the investment next year can create 6 million jobs directly. The number does not include the 2.08 million formal employees of the railway system.

There is a saying among industrial insiders, that the scale of China's current railway construction could rival the construction of railroads in the 19th century American West.

Wang says that these railway projects are "new highlights in the move to boost China's economy".

He Huawu, the Ministry of Railway's chief engineer, says the huge investment in railways would play the same role as China's large-scale road construction in the 1990s, which is a move that the government adopted to counter the 1998 Asian financial crisis. Media reports said an average 140 billion yuan was invested on road construction and 4,000 km of new roads were finished and opened to traffic each year in the 1990s.

The current railway projects will expand domestic demands, too, increasing the demand for steel and cement and boosting relative industries, he says.

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