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.

(Xinhua News Agency March 26, 2003)