CRI:

Mr. Li, we have learned from you about the ultimate goal of the “Outline”. However, I'm still wondering whether there are some more substantive targets stipulated in it. I would also like to know what roles the railway administration, civil aviation and postal service will play in building up China’s strength in transport and how you will develop your plans in the ensuing phases.

Li Xiaopeng:

The ultimate goal in building China’s strength in transport is to achieve satisfaction for our people, to ensure reliable operations and to maintain our leading competitiveness internationally. Under the general guidelines, we have fleshed out our targets in two phases.

The first phase covers the years from 2020 to 2035. During this period, China will see the rise of a basically advanced transportation network. A comprehensive network of modern transportation is expected to take shape, the satisfaction of our people is expected to increase enormously and the functions of the network are expected to solidify the modernization drive across the country. In addition, we expect the competitiveness and implications of China’s transport to grow dramatically in the international community.

During the second phase, which runs from 2036 to 2050 in middle of this century, we will further develop China’s transport strength in an all-round way. As the “Outline” defines it, we will build a country that is internationally competitive in transport, satisfying our people’s needs and ensuring strong supporting services. The infrastructure’s scale and quality, technical equipment, the S&T innovation capacity and the smart and eco-friendly measures are all supposed to rank high globally. We also expect that our traffic safety, administrative capabilities, road manners and the competitiveness and influence of modern transportation can reach top-notch standards. We will offer our comprehensive services and backups to safeguard the modernization drive of our country and enable our people to enjoy smooth and convenient transportation.

Those are the two major targets which can be further specified as follows.

To be more specific, we have charted three transport networks and two transport circles. The networks comprise, first, well-developed high-speed transportation, exemplified by high-speed railways, expressways and rapid civil aviation; second, improved traffic arteries, like, ordinary railways, national highways, fairways and oil and gas pipelines and, third, basic traffic facilities, such as, ordinary provincial highways, rural highways, branch lines, branch waterways and general aviation.

The circles refer to a speedy transport system covering the transport routes needed by people and rapid global logistics flows. The first circle is called “123 transport rings”, that will ensure one-hour commuting within each city, two-hour travel among city clusters and three-hour trip between the country’s major cities. The second one--“the 123-logistics circle”—is being built in an effort to enable one-hour delivery of commodities around the country, two-hour delivery with neighboring countries and three-hour delivery with major cities around the world. These various targets of the three networks, as well as the two circles in particular, have been constructed initially in some developed regions, even though the effect remains to be improved. However, in most regions, especially in some areas facing a huge disparity with the developed regions, full development remains to be realized. Therefore, while building China’s strength in transport, we should continue to work hard to ensure the three networks and two circles can be developed together in a good way. We’ll try our best to improve our work so as to meet the demands of our people.

That's my answer about our specific targets. In the following sessions, Mr. Yu, Dong and Dai will introduce the issues concerning railways, civil aviation and postal service, respectively.