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High-grade Highway System
The length and grade of the highways in Shandong province is well known throughout China. By the end of 2001, the total length of highways reached 71,128 km or 45.68 km per square km in terms of highways density. About 35 percent of the highways, 24,784 km in length, is above grade 2 and expressways amount to 2,077km. Both figures rank first in China. Quality highways above grade 2 now lead to all the cities where municipal or prefectural governments are located, to most major tourism sites, as well as to harbor cities and key commodity distribution has taken shape, with trunk lines forming the main framework, and connected with other parts of the country. Expressways link Jinan, the provincial capital, with 13 major cities under provincial jurisdiction, running through over 80 counties or cities at county level.
Good Railway Network
Railways in Shandong province have been developed into a comparatively self-contained net work, as the two national trunk railways, Beijing-Shanghai and Beijing-Kowloon, run vertically through its territories, and the Jiaozhou-Jinan, Yanzhou-Shijiu railways run horizontally, providing a total length of railyway of 2672 km. The newly built Beijing-Kowloon railway line links the province directly with HongKong Special Administrative Region. The harbor city of Rizhao at the eastern end of Yanzhou-Shijiu railway line was named by the State as one of the bridgeheads for the new Eurasian Continental Bridge, giving the railways in Shandong an important strategic status.
Aviation Service
Aviation in Shandong Province, although short in terms of its history, has been growing rapidly. With nine airports in all, including international airports in Jinan, Qingdao and Yantai, shandong has over 700 flight routes in service. Airlines fly direct to countries like Japan, ROK, Singapore, Russia and Thailand, and to HongKong and Macao.
Shandong Aviation Corporation, starting service in 1994, has introduced 60 new passenger planes, such as the Boeing 737-300, Boeing737-800, CRJ-200, SAAB-340 and Cessna amphibian, in addition to the luxury CRJ-604, providing a service of over 300 scheduled flights on over 200 air routes to major cities of mainland China.
Harbors
Based on the advantage of being an open coastal province, Shandong has accelerated the construction of large-scale mainstay harbors. A number of deepwater berths, special docks and transport facilities for land-island freight-passenger shipment have been built to upgrade the integrated functions and distribution capacity. Along the coast, there are now 26 ports, top in China in terms of density, and 285 berths, including 86 deep-water berths. The annual through of all these ports amounts nearly to 200 millions tons. All the ports in Shandong are open to foreign ships and to navigation to many major ports in most countries of the world. Qingdao Harbor has succeeded in having its annual throughput surpass 100 million tons and containers reach 2.6 million, entering the list of top 20 in the world.
Telecommunications and Postal Services
Postal services and telecommunications in Shandong have been modernized by and large.
In operation are several backbone companies of telecommunications, such as China Netcom, China Mobile Ltd., China Unicom and China Railcom, in addition to some 50 businesses dealing with computer network and ISP services, and 82 companies operating Internet information services. There are now 15.353 million fixed line telephone subscribers, 8.697 million mobile telephone subscribers and 2.628 million Internet users. The telephone penetrate rate is 26.38 per 100 people.
In 2001, the total business volume of telecommunication was 26.07 billion yuan. By May of 2002, the total volume had reached 13.06 billion yuan. The province has installed 15.881 million household telephones and the popularization of telephone has reached 12.4 sets per 100 persons.
By the end of 2001, the number of mobile phone users had reached 8.048 million, an increase of 60.6 percent over the preceding year.
There are currently over 3,000 postal branches in the province, with postal routes exceeding 150,000 km. A modernized postal network is being shaped featuring mechanization, automation and computer network techniques. In the area of express mail services, the global EMS operated by China Post is supplemented by such renowned companies as UPS and DHL from the United States, who have set up either branches or offices in Shandong, offering all-round services to clients.
Radio and TV stations
There are 18 radio stations and 18 TV stations, in addition to 11 cable TV stations at the city and provincial levels. There are 83 broadcast and TV stations at county levels. There are 30 medium- and short-wave radio transmission and relay stations, and 93 TV transmission and relay stations with a power of 1,000 W or more. Its average daily radio broadcasting time is 1,104 hours and 2 minutes. And the average weekly TV program transmitting time has reached 4,171 hours and three minutes. Radio and TV coverage has reached 93.5 percent and 91 percent of the population respectively.
Water Conservancy Projects
Shandong is a province short of water, with the precipitation rate decreasing from east to northwest. For many years it has been sticking to the construction of irrigation works to change this disadvantageous natural situation. Up to now, 5,083 reservoirs of various kinds have been built, among which are 32 large, 152 medium and 4,899 small-sized ones, and over 30,000 small ponds in hilly areas. The total storage capacity amounts to 16 billion cubic meters.
Diversion work from the Yellow River is the important part of ground irrigation in the province. The diversion project that brings water from the Yellow River to Qingdao is the greatest water conservancy and city water-supply project in the province since the founding of the People's Republic of China. The project involved a length of 293 km and construction of 500 buliding on its way, running through and benefiting four cities (prefecture) and 10 counties (cities, districts).
Environmental Projects
While going all out to pursue economic development, Shandong province attaches great importance to environmental protection. Along with the introduction of a series of laws, organized efforts have been made for the clean up and prevention of pollution of the Xiaoqing River, the Nasi Lakes and other key river basins that had been polluted. Law enforcement has been reinforced for environmental protection, too. A total of 96.8% percent of industrial operations now meet the standards for environmental protection; 95.2 percent of the waste emissions and discharges have met the standards.
Ecological environment protection has also been strengthened. A total of 59 nature reserve have been set up covering an area of 816,000 hectares or 5.4 percent of the land area in the province; 29 ecological model zones have been established covering 6.959 million hectares, among which the 15 state-level ones occupy 5.348 million hectares.
The overall quality of air over urban areas has been improving. The average daily level of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide in the air over the 17 cities where municipal government are stationed meet the State class-2 standard, while the average daily sulfur dioxide level dropped by 4.3 percent in 2001 compared to the previous year. |
