China Railway 22nd Bureau announced on the 30th that on the morning of the same day, the Wutong Daquan–Mulei section of the Beijing–Xinjiang Expressway, invested and built by China Railway Construction Investment Group and constructed by China Railway 22nd Bureau Group and others, was completed and opened to traffic. This marks the full opening of the Beijing–Xinjiang Expressway (G7), the world's longest expressway crossing desert and Gobi and China's second major expressway corridor into and out of Xinjiang.

Gao Fei, project manager of the Beijing–Xinjiang Expressway project of the Fourth Company of China Railway 22nd Bureau Group, said that as the expressway with the longest mileage through desert and Gobi in the world, the Beijing–Xinjiang Expressway (G7) passes through six provinces and regions—Beijing, Hebei, Shanxi, Inner Mongolia, Gansu and Xinjiang—and is the most convenient corridor connecting Northeast, North and Northwest China.

The nearly 515-kilometer Wutong Daquan–Mulei section is located in the eastern part of the northern foothills of the Tianshan Mountains, with a design speed of 120 kilometers per hour and four lanes in both directions. It is known as the "last kilometer" of the Beijing–Xinjiang Expressway. With this section open, vehicles from northern Xinjiang no longer need to detour through Urumqi to leave the region. At the same time, it shortens the road distance from Beijing to Urumqi by more than 1,300 kilometers compared with existing routes.

Gao Fei said the Beijing–Xinjiang Expressway has earned the reputation of being "a sky road when spread out, a monument when standing" because it crosses vast deserts and Gobi, making construction extremely difficult. It is another representative project with typical harsh-region characteristics after the Qinghai–Tibet Railway.

China Railway 22nd Bureau said that in the face of numerous difficulties such as frequent sandstorms and large temperature differences between day and night, the construction project department overcame the challenge of saline soil, created unique techniques such as laying geomembranes, and solved the construction problem of filling 30.5 kilometers of saline soil. In addition, based on Xinjiang's unique climate, they made rational use of the terrain and set up snowdrift platforms on necessary sections, effectively reducing snow accumulation on the route and ensuring driving safety.