(Yicai Global) Aug. 1 -- Jiangsu, East China's economically advanced province, is building high-speed rail network to form a more connected city cluster among its major cities along the Yangtze River. The Jiangsu Provincial Development and Reform Commission and relevant departments in eight cities along the Yangtze River are drafting an implementation plan, Yicai Global learned.

The planned rail network will form a high-speed rail connection in the city cluster along the Yangtze River to create "one-hour commuting circle" in the region.

The Yangtze city cluster covering eight cities along the Yangtze River, namely, Nanjing, capital of Jiangsu province, Zhenjiang, Changzhou, Wuxi, Suzhou, Yangzhou, Taizhou, and Nantong, has a per capita GDP of more than CNY120,000 (USD17,647), contributing about 80 percent of the total provincial economy in Jiangsu and is one of the regions with strongest comprehensive competitiveness in China.

Building Yangtze River city cluster will be conducive to economic integration and transformation and upgrading between South Jiangsu in the south of the Yangtze River and Central Jiangsu in the north of the River, Wang Shuhua, associate research fellow at the Institute of Regional Modernization Research at Jiangsu Provincial Academy of Social Sciences, told Yicai Global.

Due to insurmountable constraints of the Yangtze River and other reasons, exchanges of personnel and elements between the two shores of the Yangtze River proved to be highly inconvenient in the past, resulting in the differences in the economic development of South Jiangsu, and Central and North Jiangsu, Wang said. High-speed rail network construction will provide the necessary ground for economic integration in these areas.