A leading Chinese official of communications says a network featuring land transport links connecting China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) via Pan Pearl River Delta Region (PPRDR) of China will be completed by 2020.

Weng Mengyong, deputy minister of the Chinese Ministry of Communications, believes the transport linking network will help bring China closer to the international market in an efficient manner.

Meng was here in Kunming, capital of southwest China's Yunnan Province, attending a forum featuring regional cooperation and development of PPRDR.

PPRDR encompasses Fujian, Jiangxi, Hunan, Guangdong, Hainan, Sichuan, Guizhou, Yunnan provinces and Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, as well as Hong Kong and Macao special administrative regions, which have one fifth of China's territory, and one third of the country's population.

China shares land border with Myanmar, the Laos and Vietnam, all member states of ASEAN, at Yunnan Province and Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region and there are now 11 trade ports along the borderline.

China also has a deep-rooted relationship with ASEAN because of one international river known as Mekong, or Lancang River in Chinese, which has bound Cambodia, China, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam together.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao last July pledged expediting infrastructure building as one of the seven recommendations he listed to advance a stronger cooperation in the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS).

China, the Laos and Thailand have agreed to build a 1,818 km international highway which will start from Kunming, capital of Yunnan, and end at Bangkok of Thailand.

And construction has completed on 60 percent of this international highway's Chinese section that starts from Kunming and stops at Mohan, an important trade port on the Sino-Laotian border. The remainder of the section will be finished by late 2007.

The Chinese parts of two more highways connecting Kunming to Hanoi of Vietnam and to Yangon of Myanmar will be finished by late 2007 and will be upgraded to freeways in 2010.

PPRDR highway network can be expanded into ASEAN via the three main international highways: the Sino-Myanmar highway (Yangon-Mandalay-Kunming), the Thailand-the Laos-China highway, and the Sino-Vietnamese highway (Hai Phone-Hanoi-Kunming), according to Xu Rongkai, governor of Yunnan.

In the meantime, China is also stepping up construction of a railway scheme that link up China and ASEAN via Yunnan.

A feasibility study has completed for construction of the China section of the proposed Pan-Asian Railway that will run from Singapore, through Malaysia, Thailand and Myanmar before reaching China's Yunnan Province.

The new 340-km railway section will connect Dali, a well-known scenic site in Yunnan Province, southwest China, to Ruili, another Yunnan town on the Sino-Myanmar border.

The feasibility study calls for a construction budget for Dali-Ruili railway section of 10 billion yuan (about 1.23 billion U.S. dollars), said Bai Enpei, secretary of Yunnan Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China. He said construction work on the section could begin soon.

The proposed 2,600 km-long Pan-Asian Railway will start in Singapore,pass through Kuala Lumpua in Malaysia, Thailand's capital Bangkok, Yangon in Myanmar, and terminate in Kunming, capital of Yunnan.

Highways linking up Nanning, capital of Guangxi, Yunnan's close neighbor, to Guangxi's land border ports and seaports with Vietnam have also been under swift construction.

The nine Chinese mainland areas of Pan Pearl River Delta Region did 46.24 billion U.S. dollars worth of trade last year with ASEAN --- namely Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore, Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar and the Philippines -- a rise of 14 percent from 2004.

In accordance with an agreement concerning Sino-ASEAN Preferential Treatment, tariffs totaling 59.93 million U.S. dollars were exempted from levy over 516 million U.S. dollars worth of commodities imported from ASEAN last year.

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