East China's Shandong Province has become the country's first province to have more than 3,000 kilometers of expressways, and take the lead in China for the sixth year, said sources from the provincial bureau of communications.

The province's expressway network reached 3,018 kilometers with three new sections just opened, said Zhou Qiutian, director of the provincial bureau of communications.

Zhou said the three new sections are the Shandong section of the Tongjiang-Sanya expressway, the Yantai-Xinhe and the Rushan-Haiyang sections of the No.206 state highway.

The expressways in Shandong formed a criss-cross network with the provincial capital, Jinan, at the center, connecting the province's 17 major cities and 106 counties.

Zhou said the provincial government has spent 95.7 billion yuan(11.6 billion US dollars) building 2,184 kilometers of new expressways since 1998.

Expressway construction in Shandong started in 1990 with the 318-km Jinan-Qingdao expressway, which was completed in 1993. In the following ten years, 47 expressway projects were finished.

Zhou said Shandong, an economic powerhouse of China, had introduced international systems of project supervision and contract management into the expressway construction, and promotedcompetition in their operation.

The province's expressways have all passed inspections by the Ministry of Communications and more than 90 percent of its expressways are marked excellent for their quality.

Zhou said the province's expressways will reach 4,000 km by 2008, connecting 110, or more than 80 percent of, counties.

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