On September 29, a reported development from Hangzhou highlighted that the 20th main tower of the Fuchi Men highway-railway dual-purpose bridge on the Ningbo-Zhoushan Railway has been successfully capped, and the Zhoushan-side shield section of the Jintang undersea tunnel has entered its final 100-meter sprint. Since September, Zhejiang's Ningbo-Zhoushan Railway construction has repeatedly produced good news; this steel giant crossing mountains and seas is accelerating from blueprints into reality, and new development momentum for Zhoushan, the "City of a Thousand Islands," is about to be activated.

This is a vivid illustration of the old saying, "If you want to get rich, build roads first." As the economy moves toward high-quality development, this plain old saying has not become outdated; instead, it has endured and shines even more brightly. Across Zhejiang, which borders the East China Sea and is densely covered with hills, a transportation network extending in all directions has broken the constraints imposed by complex terrain. Today, for Zhejiang, from rural roads to major thoroughfares, from ground-level road networks to integrated air and sea corridors, transportation is not merely a "carrier for passage," but also a core engine for promoting common prosperity, empowering regional upgrading, and advancing opening-up.

Common Prosperity Roads Linking Villages and Towns

In the mountainous area of Songyang, a series of "Four Good Rural Roads" have broken down the barriers between the mountains and the outside world. Ancient villages, ecological tea gardens, and distinctive homestays have emerged and thrived because of these roads. In rural areas of Ruian, public buses "carry goods along the way," enabling express delivery from counties to villages on the same day, while agricultural products sold elsewhere also ride the "express train" to fetch good prices. In Zhejiang, a dense road network links villages and towns, sketching a happy picture of integrated urban-rural development.

As a demonstration zone for high-quality development and common prosperity, Zhejiang deeply understands that transportation is a "rigid necessity" for narrowing the urban-rural gap and raising the warmth of people's livelihoods. Over the years, the province has continued to upgrade rural roads, accelerate the creation of "half-hour transportation circles" for townships and key villages, and move rural road networks from "connecting many places" to "connecting well and connecting excellently."

Jingning's pilot "fixed schedules plus reservation response" mountainous public transit operation model, the first of its kind in Zhejiang, is a vivid example. For administrative villages where mid-sized buses cannot reach and where the permanent population is fewer than 200 and the actual load factor is relatively low, the county has adopted a method of "fixed scheduled buses 2 to 3 days per week plus reservations during other periods," with reserved bus fares reduced by 50%, effectively lowering villagers' travel costs.

Lan Houxiong, a villager from Zhangzhuang Village in Shawan Town, has deep feelings about this. "In the past, rural passenger transport was mainly operated by private minibuses, costing 1 yuan per kilometer, with irregular schedules. For a town-to-village trip of more than ten kilometers, if there was no scheduled passenger service, we could only pay 40 yuan for a chartered round trip. To save that money, we would rather walk down the mountain for an hour and spend an hour and a half going back up. Now, we no longer have to worry about going out."

A reserved bus in Jingning travels along a winding mountain road. Photo courtesy of the Publicity Department of the Jingning County Party Committee.

Beyond building roads and providing transport, Zhejiang has also innovatively explored a new "transportation plus" integrated development model, promoting deep linkages between transportation and industries such as agriculture, culture, and tourism, and driving income growth and prosperity for people along the routes.

The practice of Cangnan, a small coastal city, is quite representative. Along the 168 Golden Coastline, 13 distinctive scenic stations, 70 internet-famous check-in spots, and 15 tourism-supporting parking lots have been rolled out one after another, attracting a steady stream of tourists. In 2025, the area along the route received more than 10 million visitors, the number of entrepreneurial entities increased to 4,000, and more than 12,000 jobs were created directly or indirectly. Operating income of villages and towns along seven sections increased by 70% compared with 2022.

Roads extend through the scenery, people travel as if within a painting, industries flourish because of the roads, and life becomes more beautiful because of them. A relevant official from the Zhejiang Provincial Department of Transport said that during the "15th Five-Year Plan" period, the province will focus on public tourism consumption demand, plan as a whole for reforms integrating transportation and tourism to boost consumption, and create a number of new consumption scenarios such as premium tourism highways, water tourism routes, cruise yachts, low-altitude sightseeing, and "Zhejiang Charm Jiangnan Station" themed service areas, so that more people can "follow transportation to travel."

Comprehensive and Multidimensional Economic Roads

If highways are the "capillaries" nourishing rural areas, then major transportation facilities such as expressways, high-speed railways, and airports are the "main arteries" that drive industrial iteration and support economic development. In recent years, Zhejiang has continuously woven a comprehensive and multidimensional transportation network, injecting a steady stream of strong momentum into the province's economic quality improvement and efficiency enhancement.

A view of Yuhuan High-Speed Railway Station. Photo courtesy of the Publicity Department of the Yuhuan Municipal Party Committee.

In August this year, the Wenling-Yuhuan section of the Hangzhou-Taizhou High-Speed Railway officially opened for operation. With this, Yuhuan, an island city, fulfilled its "high-speed rail dream," and the "dividends" brought by the opening gradually emerged. Nanwan Smart Valley, a 10-minute drive from Yuhuan Station, is racing ahead in the future robotics industry track. Xu Mo, deputy director of the Yuhuan Municipal Bureau of Economy and Information Technology, said that the opening of the high-speed railway makes it easier to precisely attract high-quality projects and scientific and technological innovation resources, gather high-end talent, and strengthen the advantages of the robotics industry cluster.

The "dividends" also radiate to Wenling. Chen Xiangbiao, general manager of the Zhejiang Industrial Tools and Cutting Tools Trading Center, said that Yuhuan's auto parts, valves, and machine tool manufacturing complement Wenling's industrial tools and cutting tools industry. Relying on the high-speed railway corridor, the trading center will integrate northward into the core economic circle of the Yangtze River Delta and radiate southward to the manufacturing clusters of southern Zhejiang and northern Fujian.

Air corridors have also achieved leapfrog breakthroughs. During the "14th Five-Year Plan" period, Lishui Airport and Jiaxing Nanhu Airport were successively put into use, filling the aviation gaps in southwestern and northern Zhejiang. Especially for Lishui, the opening of the airport further broke the location constraints of the mountainous area, not only greatly shortening the spatiotemporal distance between Lishui and major cities across the country, but also bringing a qualitative improvement in the turnover efficiency of people, goods, and information flows. As a result, Lishui seized the opportunity to plan an airport park and turn "air advantages" into "industrial advantages."

On the first anniversary of the airport's opening, the first phase of the park had landed 28 projects cumulatively, transferred 1,066 mu of industrial land, and attracted total investment of 22.927 billion yuan. Its industrial layout covers key fields such as new energy vehicle parts, intelligent valves, and electrical machinery and equipment manufacturing, delivering an answer sheet showing how a mountainous city can leverage transportation empowerment to achieve leapfrog development.

Clearly, an increasingly dense high-speed rail network and increasingly busy air routes are linking together Zhejiang's future. Looking toward 2030, the province will continue to make efforts: improving the overall layout of "hubs plus corridors plus networks," realizing "high-speed rail in every city," basically connecting cities and towns with populations of more than 100,000 to expressways, doubling inland 1,000-ton-class waterways to 1,200 kilometers, and raising the passenger throughput capacity of transport airports to 130 million person-times.

Open Roads Connecting the World

The value of transportation lies not only in empowering domestic development, but also in opening to the outside world and connecting the globe. Zhejiang uses transportation connectivity to drive trade connectivity and polish the "golden名片" of high-level opening-up.

At the Yiwu (Suxi) International Hub Port, container trains loaded with small commodities line up ready to depart, sent to Ningbo-Zhoushan Port via sea-rail intermodal trains. As the world's only port with two single container terminals capable of handling "ten-million-TEU" volumes, Ningbo-Zhoushan Port has forests of cranes and shuttling cargo ships, with more than 300 container shipping routes serving as important trade corridors for Zhejiang and the entire country.

"Now we basically ship out through Ningbo Port on a fixed basis. Connections are smoother, catching sailing schedules is more reliable, and it saves both time and worry," said Cao Xiaojian, general manager of Zhejiang Longshang Supply Chain Management Co., Ltd.

Turning to Jiaxing, the sweater industry previously relied mainly on sea transport or air exports from other places, resulting in high logistics costs and long delivery cycles. Gu Ninglu, head of the "Maoshang Pai" platform, said that relying on the international cargo network woven by Jiaxing Nanhu Airport, sweater companies have achieved "small-batch, multi-batch" direct access to overseas markets. What an aviation hub brings is not merely a change in a single mode of transport, but upgrading space across the entire chain of production, trade, and logistics.

Behind this prosperity is Zhejiang's vigorous efforts in recent years to build a world-class strong port, a high-level civil aviation province, and a China-Europe freight train assembly center, deepen the linkage of the "four ports," and enhance its comprehensive capacity to "connect the globe and radiate across the country." At present, the province has cultivated 261 international sea shipping routes, 60 international all-cargo aircraft routes, and 27 China-Europe freight train routes, and a transportation opening system smoothly connecting the world has taken shape.

There is another phenomenon worth pondering: Zhejiang's advanced experience in the transportation field is accelerating its "going global." Not long ago, the 2026 International Senior Management Training Course on Maritime Navigation and Beaconage and the Risk Management Training Course concluded successfully in Wenzhou. During the training, Zhejiang's advanced technologies and practices in beacon management, maritime services, and shipping operations drew repeated praise from more than 40 international trainees.

Trainees visit advanced maritime navigation and beaconage equipment in Wenzhou. Photo by Feng Tianxuan.

Bwebweteiti Tongaiaba from Kiribati, a Pacific island country, said frankly that the training content was complete and focused, and that he had gained a great deal. "After returning home, I will share with my colleagues the knowledge I learned in China."

When roads are open, all industries prosper. Zhejiang's transportation construction in the new era is an all-round transformation that takes into account people's livelihood and well-being, industrial upgrading, regional coordination, and opening-up. As the building of a strong transportation province continues to deepen and take root, Zhejiang will surely discover more new opportunities in that old saying.