Train projects reshape South China regions

Liang Jielin, a tour guide in Rongxian county, Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, for seven years, said she has never been to the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area even though it is so near and well known.

Guiding a group of visitors touring Zhenwu Pavilion — an ancient wood-framed facility dubbed "outstanding structure of the South" as a national treasure in Rongxian county, Liang said she is hoping to visit the area after a new high-speed railway traversing her hometown opens in 2027.

State builders are helping construct the new 648-kilometer Nanning-Zhuhai HSR, which runs for 304 km in Guangxi and 344 km in neighboring Guangdong province, with a designed speed of 350 km per hour for the trains, cutting the travel time on an existing HSR from 3.5 hours to 2.5 hours.

The railway connects Nanning, Yulin, Cenxi, the Pearl River Delta hub airport, Jiangmen, Zhuhai and Shenzhen. The current route to Shenzhen has to transit from Guangzhou — the provincial capital — and only allows trains to run 250 km/h.

Yang Jin, a tourist from Shenzhen, was visiting Zhenwu Pavilion under the prefecture-level city of Yulin with 44 others in a tour group. He said they spent nearly four hours on the current HSR, and after seeing the pavilion, they hoped to visit Yuntian Palace — a massive structure incorporating traditional Chinese culture with modern architectural styles — in the city proper of Yulin.

Yang said both Guangxi and Guangdong have plenty of natural resources and rich sightseeing spots. The new railway can boost two-way passenger flow, especially on weekends.

Wang Wei, a staff member from Fifth Engineering Co Ltd of China Railway No 4 Engineering Group, which is building two bids on the Yulin-Cenxi section, said he is proud of taking part in constructing the new Nanning-Zhuhai HSR that will have 18 stations.

"We can view this new railway from a strategic point of view," he said, noting that the new HSR can better link the Guangxi Beibu Gulf Economic Zone with the GBA and is dubbed Guangxi's No 1 infrastructure project to fully integrate into the GBA.

While the Beibu Gulf Economic Zone covers six cities — Nanning, Beihai, Qinzhou, Fangchenggang, Yulin and Chongzuo — in Guangxi, the GBA covers the Hong Kong and Macao special administrative regions, and nine cities in Guangdong: Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Foshan, Huizhou, Dongguan, Zhongshan, Jiangmen and Zhaoqing.

With the new railway, Guangxi's goods — such as minerals, wooden products, agricultural and sideline products — can quickly reach the 1 trillion yuan ($138.8 billion) strong consumer market in the GBA, Wang said.

Besides the new Nanning-Zhuhai HSR, Guangxi is also building a 237.8-km-long Liuzhou-Wuzhou Railway, also known as the Liuzhou-Wuzhou section of the Liuzhou-Guangzhou Railway, which can transport both goods and passengers and allows trains to run at around 160 km/h upon its expected launch in 2026.

As a major engineering project of the country's 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25), the railway can also be a main channel for goods from Sichuan, Yunnan and Guizhou provinces and Chongqing municipality to reach the GBA faster, said Hu Feiyu, office director of the CREC4 project department for building the Liuzhou-Wuzhou Railway.

CREC4 is helping build the railway's No 3 bid section with a total length of 27.722 km, worth some 2.176 billion yuan, Hu said.

As for the sugar sector, Guangxi's high-quality white sugar can more quickly enter the food industry cluster in the GBA, and by-products such as molasses can be supplied to biochemical enterprises in the Pearl River Delta region, elevating Guangxi's sugar sector higher up the value chain, Hu added.

At the same time, a wood deep-processing industry belt along the Liuzhou-Wuzhou Railway can emerge using local lumber and wood products, helping create industrial agglomeration, he said.

In addition, with improved railway transport, minerals such as limestone and marble in Wuxuan county under the prefecture-level city of Laibin can also utilize advanced processing technology in Guangdong, enhancing market competitiveness.

For agricultural and related products in Guangxi, persimmon and oranges from Wuxuan usually take over eight hours to reach Guangzhou via road transport, with a damage rate of up to 15 percent. The new railway can shorten the travel time to five hours and reduce the loss rate to less than 5 percent, said Hu.

Besides enhancing traffic flow, building railways is also helping cultivate more skilled technicians and managerial staff members, Wang from CREC4 Fifth Engineering said.

Wu Can, manager of CREC4's prefabricated beams yard in Wuxuan working on the Liuzhou-Wuzhou Railway, is proud of his own growth.

"When I first took over the beam yard in December 2022, I felt a bit uneasy in front of this 'behemoth' covering seven hectares, but soon I saw a huge leap in my professional abilities," Wu said, noting that his work on site planning, equipment debugging, raw materials control and finished beam maintenance has let him accumulate valuable practical experience in every step.

Located in Ertang town, the yard has a mixing plant, steel bar distribution center, beam making area, beam storage area, beam lifting area and an office area, and is scheduled to prefabricate 2,228 T-shaped beams between Nov 1, 2023 and June 10 this year.

Liu Di, deputy chief engineer of CREC4's prefabricated components smart center for the No 3 bid of Yulin-Cenxi section on the Nanning-Zhuhai HSR, is jubilant to see more new technologies being adopted by CREC4 in building the two new railways.

Liu said as this is the first time CREC4 has introduced an intelligent production line for the prefabrication of such small components. When the yard was completed on Aug 8, 2023, it became the country's largest and most intelligent such center at the time and began production on Aug 13.

"The center is responsible for the prefabrication of precast concrete components for all five bids of the Yulin-Cenxi section of the Nanning-Zhuhai HSR, including 61,043 roadbed protective fences, 6,092 pile retaining plates, 443,802 hollow bricks, 24,204 cable troughs, 76,080 cable-trough covers, 390,344 bridge cover plates, 50,238 shutters and 438,377 pieces of tunnel covers," he said.

"Our precast concrete component requires some 55,987 cubic meters of concrete, which can fill 22 Olympic-sized swimming pools (each measuring 50 meters in length, 25 meters in width and two meters in depth, covering some 2,500 cubic meters), while our steel reinforcement used is about 8,614.2 metric tons — equivalent to the weight of over 5,700 family cars stacked together," he said.

Chen Shangjie, a CREC4 staff member, said they have successfully completed the pouring of all pile foundations for the No 3 bid of the Yulin-Cenxi section after the last one was poured on May 7, marking a new milestone in their engineering work.

Compared to highways, railway transport has significant cost advantages and is particularly suitable for the transport of bulk goods, said Li Xiaoyan, a publicity staff member from CREC4 Fifth Engineering.

With the future operations of the two new railways, the link between the Guangxi Beibu Gulf Economic Zone and the GBA can be effectively enhanced, Li said.

On Jan 16, 2008, the country proposed to build the Beibu Gulf Economic Zone in Guangxi into an important international regional economic cooperation zone, and this is the first such zone in China.

"As Guangxi is a gateway to enter the markets of ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) member states, I can foresee an enhanced traffic flow from the Beibu Gulf Economic Zone and the GBA to ASEAN economies. There will be a bright future for both the Beibu Gulf Economic Zone and the GBA," she said.