High-grade Highway System

The length and grade of the highways in Shandong province is well known throughout China. By the end of 2001, the total length of highways reached 71,128 km or 45.68 km per square km in terms of highways density. About 35 percent of the highways, 24,784 km in length, is above grade 2 and expressways amount to 2,077km. Both figures rank first in China. Quality highways above grade 2 now lead to all the cities where municipal or prefectural governments are located, to most major tourism sites, as well as to harbor cities and key commodity distribution has taken shape, with trunk lines forming the main framework, and connected with other parts of the country. Expressways link Jinan, the provincial capital, with 13 major cities under provincial jurisdiction, running through over 80 counties or cities at county level.

Good Railway Network

Railways in Shandong province have been developed into a comparatively self-contained net work, as the two national trunk railways, Beijing-Shanghai and Beijing-Kowloon, run vertically through its territories, and the Jiaozhou-Jinan, Yanzhou-Shijiu railways run horizontally, providing a total length of railyway of 2672 km. The newly built Beijing-Kowloon railway line links the province directly with HongKong Special Administrative Region. The harbor city of Rizhao at the eastern end of Yanzhou-Shijiu railway line was named by the State as one of the bridgeheads for the new Eurasian Continental Bridge, giving the railways in Shandong an important strategic status.

Aviation Service

Aviation in Shandong Province, although short in terms of its history, has been growing rapidly. With nine airports in all, including international airports in Jinan, Qingdao and Yantai, shandong has over 700 flight routes in service. Airlines fly direct to countries like Japan, ROK, Singapore, Russia and Thailand, and to HongKong and Macao.

Shandong Aviation Corporation, starting service in 1994, has introduced 60 new passenger planes, such as the Boeing 737-300, Boeing737-800, CRJ-200, SAAB-340 and Cessna amphibian, in addition to the luxury CRJ-604, providing a service of over 300 scheduled flights on over 200 air routes to major cities of mainland China.

Harbors

Based on the advantage of being an open coastal province, Shandong has accelerated the construction of large-scale mainstay harbors. A number of deepwater berths, special docks and transport facilities for land-island freight-passenger shipment have been built to upgrade the integrated functions and distribution capacity. Along the coast, there are now 26 ports, top in China in terms of density, and 285 berths, including 86 deep-water berths. The annual through of all these ports amounts nearly to 200 millions tons. All the ports in Shandong are open to foreign ships and to navigation to many major ports in most countries of the world. Qingdao Harbor has succeeded in having its annual throughput surpass 100 million tons and containers reach 2.6 million, entering the list of top 20 in the world.