Construction of the high-speed railway between Beijing and
financial hub Shanghai is due to begin on January 18.
A ceremony will be held in Beijing on Friday, Beijing
Times reported on Monday, saying it would take five years for
the project to be completed. The daily said the information was
revealed at a national railway work conference held over the
weekend.
The Ministry of Railways would contribute 78.9 percent of the
total investment estimated at 160 billion yuan (21.9 billion U.S.
dollars), while the remaining 21.1 percent would come from other
investors.
According to Railway Minister Liu Zhijun, all preparations for
the rail route have been completed.
The cost of land appropriation and resident resettlement along
the rail line is estimated at 23.3 billion yuan.
Civil engineering work on the 1,318-kilometer railway is
expected to cost 83.7 billion yuan and is divided into six
sub-contracts.
China Railway Construction Corporation, which built the
Qinghai-Tibetan Railway, Shanghai Maglev train, Beijing-Kowloon
Railway and the western railway across Hong Kong, took the lion's
share of 40.3 percent, or 33.74 billion yuan (about 4.64 billion
U.S. dollars), through its two subsidiaries, the No. 12 and No. 17
Bureaus.
China Railway Group Limited secured the second largest share
worth 21.965 billion yuan, about 26.2 percent.
China hopes to run the China Railway High-speed (CRH) train with
a speed of 350 kilometers per hour on the new railway. The latest
model of the CRH series, with a speed of 300 kilometers per hour,
rolled off the production line last month.
Upon completion in 2013, the high-speed railway will cut travel
time between the Chinese capital and its largest economic hub from
the present 10 hours to about five hours, doubling the existing
transport capacity of 160 million passengers annually.
(Xinhua News Agency January 14, 2008)
