Guizhou government is to spend Rmb200m this year on modernising the Wujiang River, part of a national waterway network. This will be the single largest investment the provincial government has made in the waterway. Upon completion, the Wujiang River will connect to the Yangtze River in the north and the Pearl River in the south, providing a route to the southwest coast. Preliminary work will finish by end of this year and the project is expected to start in 2010.

In another development, the provincial government has signed a framework agreement with the Ministry of Railways to build a network of railway lines that will connect one of the country’s poorest provinces to major cities such as Guangzhou, Shanghai, Beijing, Chongqing and Wuhan.