Isolated islands have been connected to cross-sea roads; remote Gobi deserts have been covered by modern transport network; villages deep in the mountains have embraced rapid development due to better logistics. China’s huge economic development and livelihood improvement couldn’t have been achieved without the rapid development of the transportation sector.

There is a popular Chinese proverb which goes: “if you want to get rich, you have to build roads first”.

Over the past 10 years, China has built and renovated about 2.53 million kilometers of rural roads, connecting 105,000 administrative villages to hardened roads. The country’s fixed-asset investment in railways in the same period totaled 7 trillion yuan (about $1 trillion), stretching China’s railway mileage by another 52,000 kilometers. Besides, 82 civil airports have been built or relocated, bringing the total to 250. The country now has 5,581 air routes.

The continuous improvement of the transportation system is lifting Chinese people’s living standard, and the rapid developing infrastructure is significantly optimizing transport capability, quality and efficiency. The well-built infrastructure and complete public services are also enabling more Chinese people to pursue their dreams.

According to the seventh national census, 493 million Chinese, or 35 percent of China’s total population, do not live in their native provinces. Besides, China’s floating population surged nearly 70 percent in the past 10 years to 376 million.

As of the end of 2021, over 20,000 couples had married through inter-provincial marriage registration, and there were more than 50,000 hospitals nationwide offering cross-provincial settlement services to inpatients.

China is building a unified national market and striving for market connectivity to involve every entity in the national market and present commodities and services across the country to every consumer, which has further released the potential of domestic demand and energised enterprises.

In 2021, the number of newly-added market entities went up 15.4 percent to top 28.87 million, with 25,000 market entities newly registered per day on average. In the first half of this year, Chinese express delivery companies handled 51.22 billion express parcels. Last year, courier services were available in over 80 percent of Chinese administrative villages and more than 37 billion parcels were shipped to and collected from rural regions.

The fast-developing expressway network in north China, the world’s largest three-tower cable-stayed bridge under construction in south China, and the continuously extending Sichuan-Tibet Railway… Since this year, a number of major transport projects have been in full swing.

China has built a prospering transportation system with developed road networks, as well as sea and air routes that reach every corner of the world, which both facilitates people’s traveling and smoothens the flow of commodities. It is believed that China, with great mobility, will better release the potential of its people and will always be full of vitality.

(Article: People’s Daily / Photo: HKCNA)