IV. Telecommunications

Telephones:

At the end of 1997, the province was served by a telephone switchboard capacity of 0.885 million sets. The total number of phone owners was 0.633 million with an additional 0.318 million users of paging service. For every 100 people in the province, there were on average 2.21 telephones.

V. Transportation

Railways:

Four trunk lines radiate from Guiyang, the capital city, to neighboring provinces with a total mileage of 1,468 kilometers. Electrification transformation has been completed along the Guiyang-Kunming, Sichuan-Guizhou and Hunan-Guizhou railways, which means 1,138 kilometers out of 1,468 kilometers are under electrified operation. This change has raised transportation capacity by 100 percent.

Guizhou is a key area for railway construction in the country. So far, the section of 227 kilometers within Guizhou Province on the Nanning-Kunming Railway has been launched into service. Construction of the second electrified track of the Shuicheng-Zhuzhou Railway which will include 596 kilometers running through Guizhou and which is to be the largest east-west transportation line in the country is soon to begin. Construction for the Shuicheng-Boguo and Huangtong-Zhijin railways with investment by both the central and local governments will also begin very soon. Once completed, these transportation archeries will further elevate Guizhou¡¯s position as a major transportation pivot in southwest China, and benefit the economic development not only in Guizhou but also in neighboring Sichuan and Yunnan provinces.

Highways:

Now there are over 30,000 kilometers of highways in operation in Guizhou, including five national highways and 30 provincial trunk lines which constitute a highway network with Guiyang as the center and linking up all cities and counties in the province. The first high-standard highway in the southwest¡ªGuiyang-Huangguoshu Highway has been completed while the one of the same standard between Guiyang and Zunyi was built in 1997

Waterways:

In 1998, there were 33,604 kilometers of inland waterways in Guizhou with a transportation job of 3.15 million tons completed. This was 42.5 percent over the figure of the previous year.

Airports:

By 1998, air routes had been opened to link up Guiyang with 26 cities including Hong Kong, Beijing, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Shanghai, Chengdu, Chongqing, Kunming, Guilin, Xiamen, Xian, Haihou, Changsha and Wuhan. The Longdongbao Airport, the newly completed large airport in Guiyang, was launched into service on May 28, 1997.