On July 15, with the coordinated opening of three sections of the Beijing–Urumqi Expressway — the Linhe–Baigeda section in Inner Mongolia (Inner Mongolia–Gansu border), the Baigeda–Mingshui section in Gansu (Gansu–Xinjiang border), and the Mingshui–Hami section in Xinjiang — the Beijing–Urumqi highway corridor was fully connected. With this, Xinjiang has opened its eastern gateway to the Tianshan Northern Slope Economic Belt, forming a second all-weather trunk highway for entering and exiting Xinjiang.
Xinjiang accounts for one-sixth of China's land area. It is vast and has complex terrain, and its transport infrastructure such as highways and railways is relatively underdeveloped, resulting in low logistics efficiency and persistently high logistics costs. In recent years, as the building of the core area of the Silk Road Economic Belt in Xinjiang has continued to advance, transport construction in Xinjiang has ushered in new opportunities.
In April this year, construction started on the pilot test section of the Wutong Daquan–Mulei Expressway project on the Beijing–Urumqi Expressway, a connecting section of the second all-weather corridor into and out of Xinjiang; construction also started on the pilot sections of five expressway projects, including the Urumqi–Yuli expressway (G0711), a major expressway corridor that crosses the Tianshan Mountains and links northern and southern Xinjiang. In June, construction started on the Jinghe–Yining highway (G577), another major "east-linked, west-opening" corridor in the Ili River Valley of Xinjiang.
When roads are open, trade flows. Today, driven by one transport infrastructure project after another, Xinjiang's transport hub is helping countries along the "Belt and Road" launch coordinated development. It now has the Lanzhou–Xinjiang high-speed railway, two railway passenger corridors to Kazakhstan, and two international airports, Urumqi and Kashgar, and it has opened international freight trains to Central Asia and Europe.
Zulpiya Abdukadir, director of the Transport Department of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, said that during the 13th Five-Year Plan period, Xinjiang will complete 1 trillion yuan of investment in transport infrastructure construction, build a total length of about 152,000 kilometers (including about 8,500 kilometers of expressways), and complete a main framework of 10,000 kilometers of expressways. By 2020, it aims to achieve the goals of expressways in every county, asphalt roads in every township, and hardened roads in every village.
It is understood that this year Xinjiang has 4,410 highway transport construction projects with a total investment of 757.1 billion yuan, and plans to complete 200.6 billion yuan of investment this year.