AN east-west high-speed railway artery will appear along the Yangtze River in five years, linking up Shanghai with major cities of Sichuan Province, as is known lately from Shanghai Railway Bureau.

　After completion, as estimated, the railway mileage between Shanghai and Wuhan will be shortened to 500km, and the curving line from Shanghai to Chongqing, Chengdu via Hunan and Guizhou will also be straightened. The time from Shanghai to Chongqing would be cut from the current 41 hours to within one day.

　Based on the 10th five-year (2001-2005) construction plan of the Ministry of Railway, the new railway is to run through seven cities and provinces, that is, Shanghai, Jiangsu, Anhui, Jiangxi, Hubei, Chongqing and Sichuan, with a full length of 2,024km.

　Both the GNP and grain production along the reaches of Yangtze River account for over one-third of the national total, around which gathered nearly 40 percent of cities and population of China, some economists said.

　The new railway would help to speed up development of the regional economy by transporting natural resources from the west to east and foreign capital and technologies from east to west. (SD-Agencies)