Construction of a new high-speed railroad linking Guangdong Province, an economic powerhouse in south China, and Guizhou, one of the country's poorest regions, will start this year.

The plan was announced by Lin Shusen, Governor of Guizhou, in his government work report to the first session of the 11th Guizhou Provincial People's Congress on Friday.

The planned railroad will have a length of 818 kilometers and a budget of 70.4 billion yuan (about US$9.65 billion). The cost will be shared among the Ministry of Railways, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, and Guizhou and Guangdong provinces.

The railway will allow high-speed trains to run at 250 km per hour. The trip from Guiyang, the provincial capital of the land-locked Guizhou, to Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong, will take four hours only.

Currently, there is no direct rail link between the two cities, and the need to change trains means the trip can take as long as 20 hours.

The Guiyang-Guangzhou high-speed railroad will link up with another planned high-speed railway between Lanzhou, capital of Gansu Province in the remote northwest, and Chongqing, a major industrial city in west China, forming a west-south thoroughfare.

(Xinhua News Agency January 19, 2008)