China steps up weaving high-speed railway network

In the report on the work of the government this year, Premier Li Keqiang said that the central government will invest over 800 billion yuan ($127.76 billion) in railway construction and open over 8,000 kilometers to railway traffic.[Special coverage]

All cities with more than 500,000 population will be connected by high-speed railway by 2015, it said.

As an important part of China's railway network plan, the high-speed railway which connects Zhengzhou and Xuzhou will connect Beijing-Shanghai railway and Beijing-Guangzhou railway together and also connect China's central city Zhengzhou to Xinjiang, CCTV reported.

The Zhengzhou-Xuzhou high-speed railway covers a distance of 361.9 km and has nine stations. The speed of the trains will reach 350 km per hour and the investment in this project will total 49.7 billion yuan, according to the reports.

Liu Guanying, the deputy commander of the project, said 61 percent of the construction with 29.5 billion yuan investment has finished. "The construction of this project will connect the central and the western area with the central and the eastern area which will contribute to the transportation in Europe and Asia," Liu said.

Sun Gongxin, the president's special assistant of China Railway Construction Corporation, said that the focus this year is on the ongoing project that connects Shanghai and Kunming covering more than 2,000 km.