Nation powers up leading infrastructure, energy projects

SOEs' construction of residences, roads, grids seen speeding up development

On a residential construction site close to Xueyuan Road in Beijing's Haidian district, more than 400 workers from China Construction Second Bureau Decoration Engineering Co Ltd delivered exterior decoration materials, installed a sanitary sewer system, and adjusted the height of luminaire for 1,101 apartments of between 20 square meters to 120 sq m. The housing project is scheduled to be completed and ready for acceptance inspection in August.

These apartments can meet demands of single white-collar workers living alone, and also take care of the actual living needs of second-child families in need of large spaces, said Huang Wei, project manager of the company's Beijing branch, adding that his team conducted a one-month-long closed-loop management operation when Beijing experienced a resurgence of COVID-19 cases in May to ensure work progress.

Since many apartments are designed with different spaces, the management team requires all the workers and site managers to confirm drawings before undertaking the construction work, he said.

After its completion, the residential project, located close to Zhongguancun Dongsheng Science and Technology Park in Haidian district, will help the park recruit more talent from both China and abroad, and generate commercial opportunities in fields such as retail and service in surrounding areas, Huang added.

Similar to Huang's company, a subsidiary of China State Construction Engineering Corp (CSCEC), a large number of State-owned enterprises in infrastructure, power supply and energy sectors have been rushing to speed up their construction pace of major projects and invest in key areas such as municipal and transportation service facilities, power grid networks and innovation programs.

China Railway 24th Bureau Group Corp Ltd (CR24), a unit of State-owned China Railway Construction Corp Ltd, is among such SOEs increasingly engaged in infrastructure construction nationwide, especially those expected to generate long-term benefits, banking on its edge in the sector to help improve livelihoods and shore up economic momentum nationwide.

A key urban transportation project in Hefei, Anhui province, Baogong Main Road is seeing another solid step toward final operation, as the main body of an interchange bridge has been completed recently, CR24 said.

Enabling vehicles from Baogong Main Road to another three roads in the capital city, a bridge, with a total length of 2.5 kilometers, is being built in an area with many other transportation lines nearby, which have all been operating normally during the construction process, as well as high-voltage power lines, gas and water pipelines, causing "headaches" for many of its construction workers, CR24 said.

To this end, the builder, since its first participation in the project in July last year, has been running thorough tests on the feasibility of every corresponding resettling work, and managed to erect the bridge on time.

Currently, the construction team has completed the cement pouring work and is moving ahead with road paving. The project is expected to be completed within the year.

According to CR24, the Baogong Main Road project is expected to function as a crucial link smoothing urban trips and easing congestion in Hefei. Upon the project's completion, residents will also have another faster alternative to hit highways within the provincial capital city.

Based in Shanghai, the State-owned construction project company is also ramping up efforts in infrastructure upgrades in regions along the Yangtze River, eying a bigger supporting role in the development of the area.

With the first box girder of the Wuyi section of the Shanghai-Chongqing-Chengdu high-speed railway readied on June 23, construction of the railway, a key livelihood project, has embarked on a new journey ahead of the final operation.

The Wuyi section, 51.87 km long, has 27 bridges planned in the project blueprint, which have a total length of 37.7 km and six tunnels totaling 6.4 km, including the Dangyang tunnel, a major challenge amid the whole construction process due to tunneling through hard rock.

"Digging through the 1,353-meter tunnel is indeed a great success for us," said Qin Bing, a project manager with CR24. "But we have achieved more in the construction."

According to the manager, the construction team has built along the railway many other "small projects "to protect the environment, such as sewage treatment plants, a machinery washing platform and a cement mixing facility－all achieving green operations.

"Environmental protection has been a buzzword in Yangtze River's development during recent years, and we have been going the whole hog to guarantee safe and environmentally friendly construction since the project started," Qin said.

With a designed speed of 350 km per hour, the operation of the project will have high-speed railway trains steaming ahead to more cities along the Yangtze River, boosting the development pace of the area and promoting the livelihood of residents, the manager said.

SOEs' efforts in resuming production in China's Yangtze River Delta region and accelerating the construction pace of big-ticket projects related to the country's 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25) will not only create more jobs but also generate positive factors for China's economic growth in the second half of 2022, said Wu Gangliang, a researcher at the China Enterprise Reform and Development Society in Beijing.

Infrastructure investment and projects play a driving role in manufacturing investment, industrial production, consumption and exports, he said, noting they have a strong driving effect on the upstream and downstream raw material sectors in the manufacturing sector, such as nonferrous metals, coal, glass, steel and chemical industrial chains.

SOEs' production capacity and project workflows have remained efficient and active to date this year, thanks to the country's increasingly stable operations of industrial and supply chains following effective anti-COVID measures and targeted policy support, said Zhao Ying, a researcher at the Beijing-based Institute of Industrial Economics of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

Eager to help bolster the country's economic growth in the coming months, State Grid Corp of China announced in early June that it will invest an all-time high of more than 500 billion yuan ($74.7 billion) in the power grid projects by the end of 2022.

The input is expected to drive more than 1 trillion yuan in investment from all sources, said Beijing-based State Grid.

The group will start constructing ultra-high voltage power transmission projects as early as possible, and begin construction on key power grid projects below 500 kilovolts, the company said in a statement.

State Grid said the intensive construction of key power grid projects will be conducive to promoting the high-quality development of the power grid and will drive upstream and downstream industries to resume work and production.

Constructed by Guangdong Electric Power Design Institute Co Ltd and Anhui No 2 Electric Power Construction Co Ltd－two subsidiaries of Beijing-based China Energy Engineering Corp Ltd－the second phase of the Zhongtang gas co-generation project in Dongguan, South China's Guangdong province, was put into operation in late May.

The project will ensure centralized and stable heat and power supply to support the growth of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, said Xu Qing, a senior engineer at the Guangdong Electric Power Design Institute Co Ltd.

Located in Zhongtang town, the project intends to reduce emissions and improve production efficacy and security through the replacement of coal with natural gas.

It is the world's first project of its kind equipped with a special extraction back-pressure gas-steam combined cycle power generator unit, a new type of gas generator unit with the world's largest installed capacity.

Xu said that this extraction back-pressure gas-steam combined cycle power generator has displayed outstanding performance in thermal efficiency, thermoelectric ratio and unit efficiency, and can realize gradient utilization of energy.

Once operational, the project will be able to provide 4.6 billion kilowatt-hours of power and 14.2 billion megajoules of heat annually, which is of great significance in promoting structural reform of local energy supply, improving air quality in Dongguan, and building a clean, low-carbon, safe and highly efficient energy supply system in the Greater Bay Area.

China Energy Engineering Corp Ltd expects the project will have an annual average heating efficiency of 87.78 percent and an average thermoelectric ratio of 85.1 percent, enough to replace three backup generator units and 10 coal-fired boilers of four paper-making companies in Zhongtang.