Nation expands roads to boost flow of goods, visitors

Born in Xuzhou, Jiangsu province, Zhang Chuanyin has been engaged in agricultural cultivation for over 40 years.

With accumulated farming experience and cash, he decided to enlarge his own business by planting garlic and ginger, but had to find a better place to do it.

Zhang turned his eyes to Liuzhi special district in Guizhou province in Southwest China, which boasts superior natural conditions featuring a subtropical monsoon climate — with neither extreme heat in summer nor severe cold in winter.

While enjoying abundant rainfall and a frost-free period of 294 days, Liuzhi is good for growing garlic and ginger, and Zhang's products can sell at higher prices as his produce can be harvested one month earlier than in traditional places.

He rented 153 mu (10.2 hectares) of land for trial planting in 2024, and with a good profit, he expanded it to 471 mu this year in Mugang town, and is confident of a bumper harvest this year.

As more than 100 farmers helped him plant and pick the fresh ginger, he said: "Since Oct 1, I have hired 2,000 locals to help during harvest season."

Zhang said he is expecting total sales of 6 million yuan ($858,200) this season, with ginger exported to Indonesia, Thailand and Dubai. But enhanced convenient transport is a must.

Local transport is very convenient. Air transport is accessible at Anshun Huangguoshu Airport (40 kilometers away), Liupanshui Yuezhao Airport and Guiyang Longdongbao International Airport (150 km away), in addition to accessible expressway and railway lines.

For his business, Zhang said he is betting big on the Shanghai-Kunming Expressway, which runs through Liuzhi and serves as a crucial transport artery connecting western Guizhou with Yunnan province and Southeast Asia.

Liuzhi's agricultural produce is varied and bountiful, with vegetable cultivation occupying 250,000 mu and output likely to exceed 455,000 metric tons in 2025, with an expected output value surpassing 2 billion yuan.

The 2,730-km Shanghai-Kunming Expressway, which was fully linked on Sept 8, 2011, is a great boon for local traffic, and amid rapid economic growth, traffic congestion on an existing four-lane road section in Guizhou has been considerable.

To alleviate jams and adapt to regional economic development, Guizhou decided to expand the Anshun-Panzhou section of the expressway, with the expansion commencing in March 2023, said Yin Shigang, Party secretary of the project department of China Railway No 4 Engineering Group, which is building the section.

With diverse resources, Liuzhi netted a regional GDP of 18.5 billion yuan in 2024, an annual hike of 5.9 percent, said Liu Qiang, head of the Liuzhi district government.