The World Bank's Board of Executive Directors approved on
Thursday two loans each of US$200 million to the People's Republic
of China to help finance the Second National Railways Project and
the Hubei Shiman Highway Project, which will address the
infrastructure challenges of connecting eastern provinces to
central and western China through the improvement of the so called
Zhe-Gan line and the construction of the Hubei Shiman
Expressway.
Despite China's accomplishments in reducing poverty in the past
20 years, economic growth has not been equally distributed among
China's regions and the per capita income in the 12 western and
central provinces is less than half that in the coastal provinces.
Both infrastructure projects will help the Chinese government in
its goal to combat isolation in western and central regions, both
of which suffer from poor accessibility, aggravating income
inequality.
The performance of China's rail system is very good, the Chinese
government has adopted strategic goals for the national railway
system to make it more responsive to market needs and aims at
expanding the size of the rail network, speed up railway
construction in western China and add capacity in the main
corridors of the eastern network. Nevertheless, in order to remain
competitive in the future it needs to expand its capacity further,
to keep raising the quality of services, and to acquire modern
technology.
"During the past 20 years fast growth in
China caused significant increase of both passenger and freight
traffic, creating a need for an appropriate road network", said the
World Bank manager for the Hubei Shiman Highway Project, Michel
Bellier. "The length of Chinese highways has doubled since 1980 but
the highway network remains one of the sparsest in the world; and
the lack of capacity on a series of major inter-provincial trade
corridors is one of the reason why the benefits of rapid economic
growth have not been distributed equally among eastern, central and
western areas of China," he added.
The Zhe-Gan line between Hangzhou in Zhejiang Province near
Shanghai and Zhuzhou in central China's Hunan province is the only
existing major east-west link connecting the coastal regions in the
Yangtze River Delta in the East to the industrial region in the
center of China through to Chongqing and Chengdu in the West and
Kunming in the southwest.
Similarly, Hubei is a communication node for north-south and
east-west traffic and a gateway to the less developed western
provinces. Despite significant investment in the construction of
new highways, funding is still insufficient to meet demand for both
construction and maintenance.
The Second National Railways Project has three components:
-
Improvements to the Zhe-Gan line that will raise the maximum
speed from 120 km/h to 200 km/h, improving signaling and
communications, and electrification.
-
Modernization of track maintenance technology by upgrading the
quality of track maintenance on heavily used portions of China
Railways' network.
-
Advisory services to strengthen the Ministry of Railways'
planning, management and technology capacity.
The Hubei Shiman Highway Project has three components:
-
Improvement of the highway capacity in northwestern Hubei
Province with the construction of the Shiyan- Manchuangan
expressway.
-
Improvement of the local road program will enhance people's
mobility and ability to access education, health and other social
services in remote low-income areas of the Hubei Province. Thereby
competitiveness of the local economy will be improved and
socioeconomic benefits to roadside communities enhanced.
-
Strengthening governance and policy development and road
safety by adopting more efficient practices to manage the road
network better.
By the time the Second National Railways Project is completed in
2008 customers on the Zhe-Gan railway line will benefit from a cut
in travel time end to end by 3-4 hours. The line capacity will be
increased by 13 percent and weight of freight trains will be raised
from 3,300 tons to 4,000 tons. It is also expected that improvement
of transport services will encourage economic growth in the region
by attracting new manufacturing industries. Finally environment
pollution will be reduced significantly by the switch from diesel
traction to electric.
The Hubei Shiman Highway Project is to be completed in 2008.
Road users in the Shiyan - Manchuangan corridor will be the main
beneficiaries. Expected improvements in the quality of local roads
will lead to lower transport costs throughout the province and
lower life-cycle costs for road maintenance. Adopting more
efficient practices for managing the roads will promote effective
use of public funds, thereby enhancing the contribution of the
highway network to economic development and its responsiveness to
social needs. Finally, the road traffic safety initiatives will
reduce accident rates, thereby saving lives and addressing negative
road impacts.
(China.org.cn June 25, 2004)