INFRASTRUCTURE FACILITIES

During the past twenty years, 24 billion RMB were invested on the construction, and this has made great changes on the municipal construction in Shantou. Today the multifunctional communication network has been fundamentally formed with a complete set of sea, land and air transportation means. Te-thousand-tonnage ships can sail directly into Shantou port, our railways have been connected with the national railway network, the supply of electric power is adequate and our post and telecommunications have stepped into the national front. High-level planning, large-scale investment and rapid construction have greatly improved the investment environment of our city.

1. SEAPORT
Shantou Port, regarded as “the entrance of east Guangdong and the communication center of south China”, is one of the 20 pivotal ports confirmed by the Ministry of Communications. It owns thirty-one 5,000-ton berths, including nine 10,000-ton deep-water berths. The total annual handling capacity reaches22.150 thousand tons and it can handle 725 thousand containers every year. Shantou Port has cargo business with 210 ports of 53 countries and regions in the world.

2. LAND TRANSPORTATION
The completion and operation of Guangzhou-Meizhou-Shantou Railway and Meizhou-Kanshi Railway has connected Shantou by railway with Shenzhen and Guangzhou to the west, Zhanzhou and Xiamen to the east, directly to Beijing to the north. The national highways No.324 and No.206 pass across Shantou and spread to all parts of our country. The Gulf Bridge and Shenzhen-Shantou Expressway connect three special economic zones of Shantou, Xiamen and Shenzhen, forming an important part of the backbone railways on southeastern coast. The highway density of our city is 83 km per hundred sq/km. There are 176 passenger transportation lines and 3,400 buses running to the main cities in south China, east China and southwest China.

3. AIR TRANSPOSTATION
Shantou Airport has become one of the main domestic airports, suitable for planes like Boeing 737 and 757. There are 44 airlines from Shantou to 40 domestic cities and 4 countries and regions like Hong Kong, Bangkok, Singapore and Kuala Lumpur, which have the annual transportation capacity of 3 million passengers. In 2000, it transported 1.044 million passengers. Shantou has set up China Southern Airlines (Group) Shantou Company, which owns four Boeing 737 planes.

4. POST ANDTELECOMMUNICATIONS
Shantou has established a telecommunication structure with large capacity digital transmission by optical fiber cables, microwaves, satellite telecommunications, telephones program-exchanged, terminals intelligence-controlled and business computer-managed. It owns a modern and multifunctional telecommunication network. New telecommunication business has been opened and developed rapidly, such as group telephones exchanging, digital data transmission, E-mail and internet.