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Shenzhen ups ante on HK cooperation

By Chen Hong (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-07-10 07:37

SHENZHEN: Passengers in this southern boomtown are expected to spend just 12 minutes traveling to Hong Kong international airport aboard a cross-border railway by 2011.

The Hong Kong special administrative region government conducted a feasibility study on construction of the railway linking Shenzhen's and Hong Kong's airports, and would release the results by the year's end, Guangzhou-based 21st Century Business Herald reported Wednesday.

Stanley Hui, chief executive officer of Airport Authority Hong Kong, said the railway will build a stop in Shenzhen's Qianhai, Nanshan district, which will connect the Qianhai subway station slated to open in 2011, the newspaper reported.

Traveling the entire railway would take 17 minutes, while it would only be 12 minutes between the Qianhai and the Hong Kong airport, Hui said.

The airport railway plan has been drafted in the Blueprint of Shenzhen and was among dozens of measures to strengthen cooperation between the two neighboring cities.

The blueprint, which would cover the period from 2007 to 2020, got the nod from the Guangdong provincial government and is pending final approval from the State Council.

The blueprint is intended to transform the city, which pioneered China's reform and opening up, into a special economic zone focused on innovation, a major regional hub and an international city developing in sync with Hong Kong.

In addition to playing an important role in experimental reforms, the city would be more aggressive in developing regional cooperation with Hong Kong and Macao, the Shenzhen planning bureau said.

In its quest to achieve a free flow of people, goods and capital between Shenzhen and Hong Kong, Shenzhen will launch a laundry list of transportation infrastructure projects, including airport facilities, ports, railways, roads and border checkpoints, to improve traffic.

The blueprint also established a series of new standards for measuring cooperation between Shenzhen and Hong Kong.