Guangdong's high-speed railway ambitions have extended to one of the province's poorest cities, Heyuan, despite doubts whether the project will be financially viable.
Guangzhou Daily reported yesterday that Heyuan party chief Chen Jianhua had announced that a high-speed railway line connecting the city to Guangzhou and Shenzhen would be complete by 2015 or 2016.
Heyuan, in northeastern Guangdong, about 150 kilometres from Shenzhen and Guangzhou, is one of the poorest cities in the nation's wealthiest province.
Guangdong suffers from a yawning income gap, with official figures showing that per capita gross domestic product in remote parts of the province was only a quarter of that in the Pearl River Delta in 2009.
The newspaper said construction of the project would begin soon, with experts from the provincial railway design institute to begin preliminary research in Heyuan this week. Trains will travel at up to 450km/h, with passengers able to travel from Heyuan to the provincial capital or central Shenzhen in just 30 minutes.
Chen said the project was part of an extension of the Guangzhou-Meizhou -Shantou high-speed railway project.
He added that Heyuan would benefit from 21 key provincial projects, including five big roads, during the 12th five-year plan, with total investment exceeding 100 billion yuan (HK$120 billion).