Construction: Work begins on Beijing-Shanghai express railway

The Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway, with a designed speed of 350 kilometers per hour, started construction on Friday.

The 1,318-km-long railway line, upon its completion in five years, will cut the journey time between China's capital of Beijing and its eastern financial hub of Shanghai in half, to five hours. It will also lift the one-way transport capacity to 80 million passengers and more than 100 million tonnes of cargo annually, said the Ministry of Railways, reports Xinhua.

Attending a ceremony, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao announced the formal start of the construction and laid the cornerstone for the line with workers.

The line will traverse Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Shandong, Anhui, Jiangsu before reaching Shanghai. It connects two major economic zones -- in the Bohai Bay and the Yangtze River Delta.

One fourth of the nation's population are living in the two economically prosperous regions where local GDP accounts for 40 percent of the nation's total.

Mike Hitchen, Mike Hitchen Consulting
Publisher ofi On Global Trends and Sydney Irresistible