Benefiting from the Chinese government's strategy of developing the vast western region, the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in the northwest has made marked progress in infrastructure construction.

The Chinese government has for the past three years invested more than 70 billion yuan (US$8.36 billion) in building highways, power plants, dams and telecommunications facilities in the region. Xinjiang takes up 1.66 million square kilometers, or one-sixth of China's total land space.

Statistics from the regional communications department show that Xinjiang built 32,300 kilometers of highways in the last three years, bringing the total length of the region's highways that have opened to traffic to 57,700 kilometers by the end of last year.

Marked progress has also been recorded in railway construction, with the region's total length of railway opened to traffic reaching 3,010 kilometers, facilitating further opening-up of the region.

Improved traffic facilities helped boost foreign trade in the region, with the foreign trade volume in the first 11 months of last year rocketing 48.5 percent year-on-year to US$2.34 billion. This growth rate was one of the highest among all provinces and autonomous regions in China.

Currently, Xinjiang boasts the longest air route in China and 11 major cities in the region have been linked by air so far. Xinjiang Airlines, which has a record of safe flights for 48 years, operates 92 national and international air routes.

A telecommunications project, so far the largest in Xinjiang, which consists of five loop optic cables and two fiber optic cables linking the region with other parts of China, went into operation last December.

"This project can allow one million people to make domestic long distance calls at the same time," said Jing Hongwei, an engineer with the Xinjiang Telecommunications Company. "It's like 40 expressways each of which allow 30,000 autos to run side by side."

Construction on more infrastructure projects are still underway or under planning. These projects include an expressway in the southern part of Xinjiang, 4,000 kilometers of highways in rural areas and an international railway linking Chinese Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan.

Han Xueqi, an official in charge of development planning, said that increased infrastructure construction is expected to help stimulate fast economic and social progress in the region.