China will build high-speed rail under the Yangtze River, driving upstream and downstream industries to increase value-added by nearly 1.5 trillion yuan.

On March 30, according to CCTV Finance and Economics, right now, from the Yangtze River’s coastline to border coastal areas, new transportation lifelines are continuously extending, injecting a steady stream of new momentum into regional development. At the Yangtze River’s mouth where it flows into the sea, large cargo ships pass back and forth, and the golden waterway is bustling. Beneath the river surface, the major project of the “15th Five-Year Plan” period—the flagship project of the high-speed rail along the river—is stepping up construction. At a depth of 89 meters underwater in the Yangtze River, the world’s largest diameter high-speed rail tunnel boring machine is accelerating its excavation here. The “15th Five-Year Plan” outline will integrate a high-standard high-speed rail corridor along the river into 109 major engineering projects. It will extend all the way from Shanghai to Chengdu, connecting three major city clusters and stretching for nearly 2,000 kilometers. Tunneling and bridge-building will drive the research and customized development of more than 200 sets of major equipment such as shield tunneling machines and bridge construction machines; laying rails will bring sales orders of 570,000 tons of high-strength special steel; even concrete prefabricated components for assembling tunnels are fostering an intelligent manufacturing facility. The total investment in the high-speed rail along the river exceeds 500 billion yuan, and estimates show it will drive an increase in value added of nearly 1.5 trillion yuan across upstream and downstream industries. An all-new economic corridor is also accelerating its formation. By overlaying the map of the high-speed rail line along the river with the distribution map of national-level advanced manufacturing industry clusters, it can be found that it will connect more than one-quarter of the nation’s national-level advanced manufacturing industry clusters; not only that, it will also link nearly 40% of the country’s key laboratories, allowing innovation resources to flow faster along the tracks.