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Between 2012 and first half of 2017, China has made tremendous achievements in highway, expressway and high-speed railway construction.
According to the statistic report of the Development State in the Transportation Industry issued by the Ministry of Transport, China's total highway mileage has reached 4,696,300 kilometers by the end of 2016, with the highway density increasing by 4.77 kilometers per thousand square kilometers compared to 4.41 five years ago.
The highway network in eastern China provinces have reached 11.8 km per thousand square kilometers, surpassing the average of 7.1 km per thousand square kilometers in the US.
By the end of 2016, China's total expressway mileage has risen to 131,000 km thousand kilometers, ranking top of the world, according to the Ministry of Transport of China.
It said 98 percent of cities with a population of more than 200,000 have been covered by the expressway networks.
The railway network in China is expected to reach 150,000 kilometers by the year of 2020, with 30,000 kilometers of high-speed train mileage.
In the past five years, China has carried out major projects with innovative ideas of development featuring green, ecological and smart expressways.
The Jingxin (Beijing-Xinjiang) Expressway links Beijing, capital of China, and Urumqi, capital of northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region. With a length of 2,768 km, the expressway would be the longest freeway across Gobi Desert.
The whole expressway will soon be open to traffic after five years of construction.
Humaling Tunnel, located in Gansu province and the final section of the Chongqing-Lanzhou high-speed railway, was completed on June 19, 2017, after more than eight years of construction in the mineral resources-rich areas, marking the completion of Lanzhou-Chongqing HSR.
Also known as Lanyu railway, trains are expected to run at 160 km per hour, cutting the travel time between Lanzhou and Chongqing from 20 hours to seven and a half hours.
Western Ring Railway in Hainan
After 27 months of construction, 345-km Western Ring Railway in Hainan was put into operation in December 30, 2016, completing the world's first high-speed train line circling an island.
The western stretch, with a designed speed of 200 km per hour, has 16 stops in six cities and counties, linking provincial capital Haikou with Sanya, a tropical tourist spot.
Editors: Shen Yiming, Liu Wanyi (intern)
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