BEIJING, Feb. 15 (Xinhua) -- With the advancement of China-proposed Belt & Road Initiative (BRI), 2018 is a year when a batch of project contracts were signed and construction on some started. A large number of projects mostly concerning culture or the people's livelihood are initialed to bring tangible benefits to the local people.
Five years on, a number of transportation engineering projects are under construction or have been completed, providing foundation for interconnection of countries and beneficial for people's livelihood, including Abu Dhabi Ports in UAE, deep water terminal of Kuantan Port in Malaysia, Lekki Deep Sea Port in Nigeria, Gwadar Port in Pakistan, phase 2 project of Hambantota Port in Sri Lanka; Addis Ababa-Djibouti Railway linking the capitals of Ethiopia and Djibouti, China-Maldives Friendship Bridge, Fourth Bridge over Panama Canal, Mekka-Madina High-speed Railway in Saudi Arabia, as well as the main bridge of the first overpass in Mongolia named Yarmag.
In terms of telecoms infrastructure, last year saw an intensive launch of BeiDou satellites in China which successfully sent BeiDou-3 satellites into space to form a basic system to provide services for countries participating in the Belt and Road Initiative. China released the emergency support mechanism in April, 2018 for international users of FengYun Meteorological Satellites in disaster prevention and mitigation to provide countries along the Belt and Road routes with high-frequency cloud atlas and quantitative products in case of meteorological disasters. Sino-Nepal cross-border optical cable started operation in January 2018, connecting Nepal to the worldwide web through the Chinese cable route.
As for energy cooperation, the first Chinese enterprise-invested phase-1 BOT (build-operate-transfer) coal-fired power plant project in Vinh Tan, Vietnam was put into full commercial operation at the beginning of this year, which will generate about 8 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity a year to meet the demand of 1.25 million local people. The Neelum-Jhelum project, one of the largest hydropower stations in Pakistan, officially started supplying electricity to the national grid in April, 2018. Yamal liquefied natural gas (LNG) project in Arctic Russia officially commissioned the third or last production line on Dec. 11 and thus reached its full capacity one year earlier ahead of schedule, marking the largest economic cooperation project between China and Russia fully completed and put into production, and demonstrating the high-end manufacturing capability of China.
In urban development, the first collaboration project, namely mega Kurunegala Water Supply and Sewerage Project in Sri Lanka was completed in August, 2018 by China Machinery Engineering Corporation (CMEC) and Sri Lanka's National Water Supply and Drainage Board. The Moragahakanda Project, the biggest water reservoir in Sri Lanka, has brought great benefits to local agriculture and people. JiLing-Hedong light rail Project in Vietnam will be put into operation by the end of 2019 to alleviate the country's traffic pressure. The Orange Line project in Lahore, Pakistan started trials, cutting travel time from 2.5 hours to 45 minutes. (Edited by Wu Shuang)
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