According to the Transport Commission of Gansu province, the central government has spent Rmb1.8bn in the eight ‘severely-affected’ counties and 36 ‘affected’ counties over the past year and will spend an additional Rmb200m by the time of the first year anniversary in May. The money is being spent on rebuilding roads and bridges; the number of bridges alone exceeds 130. The transport commission vowed that all the rebuilding projects would be completed by the end of November 2010.

The earthquake last May was recorded at 8.3 on the Richter scale and wiped out a number of rural communities in Sichuan and Gansu provinces. So far, similar figures have not been made available by Sichuan provincial government.

Relief efforts have considerably increased the throughput volumes of cement and other building material such as steel along the Yangtze. In March, for the first time, the amount of cargo going upstream to Sichuan was larger than that of cargo coming downstream to the coastal region.