A photographer participating in an aerial photography project entitled "A Sky High view of Henan" commented that Henan's expressways have aesthetic appeal when viewed from the heavens, having the appearance of a huge cross. Henan Province, located in the hinterland of the Central Plains area, is the communications hub of China's land transportation, and occupies a strategic position within the pattern of China's communications development. Trunk railway lines radiate from Henan in all directions, and the Eurasian Continental Bridge from Jiangsu's Lianyungang to Rotterdam in the Netherlands also traverses the province. Seven expressways and nine national highways, including numbers 105, 106, and 107, pass through Henan, forming the framework of its highway network.

Expressway construction started in 1990. By the end of 2000, Henan's highway mileage had reached 64,463 kilometers, ranking sixth in the country. It also built 9,028 class-two highways, ranking third in the country, and the province's highway density reached 38.6 kilometers per 100 square kilometers -- 3.86 times the national average. During the Ninth Five-Year Plan period (1996-2000), Henan invested 34.3 billion yuan in highway construction, 2.5 times that of the Eighth Five-Year Plan period (1991-1995). Following improvements in communications facilities, great changes have taken place in Henan's outlook.

Working with All His Might

In 2000, Henan's highway construction made a historic breakthrough as regards investment, having reached a level of 10.5 billion yuan in one year, thus almost doubling the record high of 6 billion yuan, and newly constructed highway mileage amounted to 4,100 kilometers, doubling the annual growth rate prior to 1998.

Shi Faliang, director of the provincial communications department, and major operative within the department for seven years, has once more become a media focus. Upon meeting him in his office, he gave a brief description of his background. Shi Faliang was born in 1948, and joined the Communist Party of China in 1969. In 1994, he was promoted to the position of deputy director of Henan provincial communications department, and in October 1999, he was promoted to director.

In order to seize the opportunities created by western development, the provincial people's government made highway construction a priority, requiring the communications department to increase its 2000 highway construction investment from 7 billion yuan to 9 billion yuan. Although faced with great difficulties, Shi Faliang finally achieved 10.5 billion yuan of investment.

In 2001, Shi Faliang and his staff worked hard on their allotted tasks. While supervising the work to ensure it proceed according to schedule, they also staged activities such as competitions for "excellent projects," "fine-quality projects," and "quality and proficiency year," resulting in 100 percent of the projects being up to standard and 87 percent being judged as excellent.

The provincial communications department has reformed its management systems for communications construction and communications enterprises, achieving impressive results. Three expressway companies, namely, Shangkai, Zhuxin and Xinzheng, have been established, finally opening the channel, which had been negotiated for many years to no avail, through which foreign loans could be utilized. The establishment of the Henan Province Expressway Development Co., Ltd., with total assets of 12.4 billion yuan, created an enterprise with the largest assets in Henan Province. Reform of the communications investment and financing system has also been conducted. The department has established a foreign investment office and fund management center, greatly enhancing its access to foreign capital. At the beginning of 2000, it signed an agreement for a loan of 8.4 billion yuan from the State Development Bank, and also signed agreements with the Bank of China for a Japanese transferable loan of US $200 million and RMB loan of 1.3 billion yuan. In addition, in 2001 the ZhuXin Expressway Company signed an agreement with the World Bank, making Henan Province the largest communications loan beneficiary of the World Bank.

Shi Faliang is well known for his diligence. In 1994, he was put in charge of construction of the Zijingshan Flyover Project, his first major task after being appointed deputy director of the communications department. As the most important element of Zhengzhou's "four bridges and one road," this was a most arduous and onerous construction project. This three-layer flyover, with a construction area of 580,000 square meters, and a total length of 1,976 meters, originally required two years to complete. As its location was at the juncture of Zhengzhou's east-west and north-south communications, however, the provincial government took the decision to shorten the construction period from two years to six months. Shi Faliang gave his personal guarantee that the project would be completed within six months, failing which, he would resign from his post. Three months later, when the project was at its crucial stage, Lee Kuan Yew visited Zhengzhou from Singapore. The provincial leader asked Shi Faliang whether the motorcade taken by Singaporean guests would be able to drive over the flyover. He replied, "If the flyover cannot be completed by that time, then let the motorcade roll over my body." It was at this time that Shi Faliang's cerebrovascular disease recurred due to overwork. At his office he took an intravenous drip while listening to work reports, and at crucial moments, removed the syringe to rush downstairs. The principal structure of the Zijingshan Flyover was completed within 175 days, 5 days ahead of schedule. Li Changchun, the then secretary of the CPC Henan provincial committee, patted him on the shoulder, remarking that this was a "shining project" in terms of speed, target and quality, making a play on his name "Faliang," which means "shining."

Seeing to Everything Personally

With Zhengzhou at its center, the Kaifeng-Shangqiu Expressway is to the east, the Luoyang-Sanmenxia Expressway to the west, the Zhumadian-Luohe Expressway to the south, and the Zhengzhou-Xinxiang Expressway to the north. From 1998 to 2000, the total mileage of the 10 expressways under construction surpassed the total length of that achieved in seven years prior to 1998, reaching 900 kilometers.

By the end of the Tenth Five-Year Plan period (2001-2005), Henan's highway mileage will have reached 75,000 kilometers, that of expressways will have surpassed 2,000 kilometers, and the highway density will reach 45 kilometers per 100 square kilometers. Within five years, Henan will open fast channels to its neighboring provinces, and all 17 cities directly under the provincial government will be linked to the provincial capital of Zhengzhou by expressways. Each county will have a highway above Grade Two linking it to the outside, and each township will have asphalt roads, while every village will have access to highways.

The two national trunk highways, the Beijing-Zhuhai and the Lianyungang-Korgas, will run a total distance of 1,158 kilometers within the territory of Henan Province, and seven key highways, including the Dongying-Shenzhen, the Rizhao-Nanyang and the Taiyuan-Zhuhai, will run 2,540 kilometers through Henan. When construction of the total 4,000 kilometers of expressways in Henan Province is completed, all the province's central cities and main economic zones will be linked, and the inter-provincial expressway exits will number 15. By that time, a transportation network radiating in all directions will have been formed. Henan will thus become a province with advanced communications facilities.

Shi Faliang is known for his down-to-earth work style, and for his insistence on personally supervising every stage of each project under his charge. When the tasks for 2001 were assigned, he led the leaders of relevant departments and offices to grassroots units and construction sites, in order to coordinate the implementation of various targets. Shi Faliang traveled 6,000 kilometers to the communications departments of 18 cities directly under the provincial government. On arrival, he expected the local leaders to answer three questions, "What are your quota tasks?" "What concrete measures are you taking to complete these tasks?" "What problems do you need me to help resolve?" In the past, there were frequent complaints that the supervising department was difficult to deal with, but these days Shi Faliang solves problems on the spot. In the past year, Shi Faliang has been to Luoyang four times, Sanmenxia five times, Xinyang six times, Shangqiu four times, and Zhoukou three times. He has traveled to almost all the 100 counties and cities in Henan.

Shi Faliang observes the grassroots work publicly and also investigates privately, a schedule that reflects his stringent management methods. On the second weekend after the 2000 National Day, he and the leaders of the Highway Administration and Toll Collecting Office went incognito to investigate the Zhengzhou-Xuchang-Pingdingshan Highway checkpoints, the ninth such investigation of the year. He patrolled from eight o'clock in the evening to 12:30 midnight. On discovering that one checkpoint had let six overloaded trucks pass after paying a fine, he immediately summoned the person in charge of the checkpoint and ordered him to rectify these violations. Shi Faliang is himself a good driver. In order to investigate and solve problems, he often drives a truck on the highway in the garb of a truck driver. Indiscriminate fee collection and fines were formerly a worrisome problem, at the time he was deputy director of the provincial communications department. He often read letters of complaint from the masses that both concerned and infuriated him. On one occasion, he took a truck loaded with coal from Shanxi Province and passed through a checkpoint. When the personnel on duty imposed a fine on the truck driver but did not give him a receipt, Shi Faliang was incensed. "I am Shi Faliang, the deputy director of the communications department. I came here specifically to pay my respects to your checkpoint, and find that you not only defame this place, but also harm the entire image of Henan Province. This checkpoint is no longer operational."

Shi Faliang's strictness is by no means confined to his subordinates, as he is also very stern on himself. For the past six years, Shi Faliang has worked almost every day, including weekends, often until midnight. He frequently goes to construction sites and rural areas, to listen to reports and to oversee the grassroots units' implementation of the work schedule. Shi Faliang is not in good health. He is diabetic, and has liver ailments. Overwork frequently causes his legs to swell. In early 2000, his blood sugar level reached 16.3. He dealt with this by taking medicine with him on his visits to construction sites.

Tapping Financial Sources

"To get rich, first build roads; to get rich fast, build expressways" is a slogan popular in Henan Province. Since the opening of the Zhengzhou-Luohe and the Kaifeng-Luoyang expressways in 2000, the time needed to travel these distances has been cut to a third of that formerly needed, while traffic capacity has increased five-fold. Construction of expressways has promoted the development of industry, agriculture, commerce, and tourism along the road, directly bringing about the growth in building materials, steel products and petrochemicals, and contributing 0.39 percentage to the province's GDP growth in 1998 and 0.24 percentage to its 2000 increase. With the implementation of poverty-alleviation communications projects over the past few years, the number of impoverished inhabitants of Henan has consistently dropped. In Luoyang alone, such implementation has reduced the needy population from 190,000 to 155,600.

In his report on government work, Li Keqiang, governor of Henan Province, listed communications construction as one of the eight measures necessary to develop Henan's economy. In the coming three years, the annual investment in Henan's highway construction will exceed 10 billion yuan, and to realize the goal of the Tenth Five-Year Plan, a total of 70 billion yuan is needed.

With accelerated highway construction, opening more channels through which to raise funds has become imperative. Besides collecting transport tolls and receiving investment from the Ministry of Communications, the financing capability of the communications system has greatly increased through reform of communications enterprise management. Investment from enterprises and various localities amounts to 8.5 billion yuan.

As regards highway construction undertakings, Shi Faliang has helped make Henan Province rank first in the country in terms of utilizing foreign capital. In order to find financial resources other than government investment, he has begun to experiment with other methods, such as transfer of the right to collect tolls; raising capital on the stock market; auction of the right to name roads and bridges; auction of the right to set up advertising billboards; and direct investment by foreign firms.

On June 28, 2001, a press conference aimed at invitations to invest in Henan's highway construction was held in the Media Center, Beijing. The agenda included all of these proposed alternative sources of finance, and public bids were invited from home and abroad. The proposed project for a 1,170-km highway, at a total investment of 31 billion yuan, provoked interested responses. A number of investors expressed their intention to cooperate. This was China's first press conference held by the communications system as a means to inviting investment. Three days later, at the National Conference on the Work of Foreign Investment held by the State Council, emphasis was again laid on the need to intensify efforts to invite foreign capital.

At a similar press conference held in Hong Kong on August 1-4, the response from all sides was enthusiastic, and sixteen Chinese and foreign enterprises signed 26 letters of intent to cooperate, involving a total investment of 33.2 billion yuan.

Following the changes in the structure of investment and financing, Henan's highway construction is becoming far more market-oriented. All the projects listed in the Tenth Five-Year Plan will be subject to public bidding, in order to introduce advanced technology and experience, and to improve the quality of design. Reform of the management system will be deepened, and a company will be set up to expedite the construction of each highway. According to the prerequisite of guaranteeing the required standard for market entry, the "project legal person" system will be instituted throughout the entire industry.

By staff reporter MU YU