Deal for China's first privately controlled high speed railway inked

The investment contract for the Hangzhou-Shaoxing-Taizhou Railway Public-Private-Partnership Project has been officially signed in Hangzhou, east China.

The Hangzhou-Shaoxing-Taizhou railway will be the first in China to be controlled by the private sector. [Photo: sina.com]

A group of private investors led by Chinese conglomerate Fosun International will invest around 45-billion-yuan in the project, and will hold a majority stake.

The new agreement will create the first domestically produced high-speed rail line controlled by the private sector.

The new project will connect the cities of Hangzhou and Taizhou. It will cover 269 kilometers and have 9 stations.

Construction work for the project is expected to begin by the end of 2017, and is due to be complete before 2021.

As of the start of 2017, there were 2,595 high-speed trains in operation in China, accounting for around 60 percent of all the high-speed trains in the world.

China has built the world's largest high-speed rail network over the past decade. [Photo: gov.cn]

In creating the world's largest high-speed rail network, China's state-run railway operator has taken on heavy debt in this process.

China Railway Corporations liabilities totaled 4.21 trillion yuan by the end of June last year.

Luring private capital into infrastructure projects is seen as a way to alleviate some of the debt load.