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The northern part of the Guangdong Province section of the Beijing-Zhuhai freeway, a north-south trunk line, was opened to traffic on Apr.3.

The section, extending 109.9 kilometers, has been completed after more than four years of construction. The section begins at Xiaotang, a juncture between central China's Hunan Province and Guangdong to the south, and ends at Gantang in Shaoguan City, in Guangdong Province.

This part of the freeway has four lanes and was built at a cost of 5.66 billion yuan (682 million US dollars), of which, 200 million US dollars came from World Bank loans, said Lin Yigong, an official in charge of supervising the Xiaotang-Gantang freeway construction.

Workers have constructed 74 bridges and seven tunnels on the northern Guangdong part of the freeway, which traverses rugged mountain landscape.

A panel of specialists organized by the Chinese Ministry of Communications has assessed the completed northern part and concluded that all the facilities built meet the design requirements and that 92 percent of them are of top quality.

The entire Beijing-Zhuhai Freeway originates in Beijing, in north China, and ends in Zhuhai City in Guangdong Province. The route will cut through Beijing Municipality and Hebei, Henan, Hubei, Hunan and Guangdong provinces, with a total length of 2,317kilometers.

The completed northern portion of the freeway in Guangdong will be of great significance in promoting local economic development in the northern mountainous areas of the province, one of the country's economic powerhouses, said a local official.