The northern part of the Guangdong
Province section of the Beijing-Zhuhai freeway, a north-south
trunk line, has been finished after more than four years of
efforts.
The completed section, with a length of 109.9 kilometers,
begins at Xiaotang, a juncture between central China's Hunan
Province and Guangdong to the south, and ends at Gantang in
Shaoguan City, Guangdong.
This part of the freeway has four lanes and was built with
a budget of 5.66 billion yuan (US$682 million), of which,
US$200 million is covered by World Bank loans, said Lin
Yigong, an official in charge of managing the Xiaotang-Gantang
freeway construction.
Workers have constructed 74 bridges and seven tunnels for
the northern Guangdong part of the freeway, which traverses
complicated mountain landscape.
A panel of specialists organized by the Chinese Ministry of
Communications has assessed the completed northern part and
concluded that all the facilities built have met the design
requirements and 92 percent of them are of the highest
quality.
The whole Beijing-Zhuhai Freeway begins from Beijing in
north China and ends at Zhuhai City of Guangdong Province. The
route will cut through Beijing Municipality and Hebei, Henan,
Hubei, Hunan and Guangdong provinces with a total length of
2,317 kilometers on completion.
The finished northern part of the freeway in Guangdong will
be of great significance in promoting local economic
development in the northern mountainous areas of the province,
one of the country's economic powerhouses, said a local
official.