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10-01-2008 China
will build at least 5,000 km of expressways this year, bringing the total length
of expressways in the nation to almost 60,000 km by the year-end, Minister of
Communications Li Shenglin said on Saturday. There
are currently 53,600 km of expressways traversing the country - the second longest
in the world behind the United States, which has 89,000 km. Last
year, 8,300 km of new expressways were built and opened for use across the country,
which is more than the total length of freeways in Japan (7,000 km), Li said at
an annual working conference in Beijing. Twenty-one
provinces, municipalities and regions now have freeway networks longer than 1,000
km. Among them, Henan and Shandong provinces each have more than 4,000 km of freeways,
while Jiangsu and Guangdong provinces each have between 3,000 and 4,000 km. In
the past five years, the country has built 28,000 km of freeways, almost equal
to the combined total in Canada and Germany, which rank fourth and fifth in the
world respectively in terms of the length of expressways built. China
plans to have 85,000 km of expressways by 2020.
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