China is reportedly planning to invest 36 billion dollars to build the world's longest underwater tunnel, connecting Dalian in Liaoning province and Yantai in Shandong province.
According to the scheme, cars will be loaded onto railway carriages, which would run at a speed of 220km/h along the 123km tunnel joining the two northern port cities in an earthquake-prone region.
A blueprint for the mammoth project is expected to be submitted to the all-powerful State Council in April, News 24 reported.
Wang Mengshu, a tunnel and railway expert at the Chinese Academy of Engineering said that the underwater tunnel is expected to be completed within the period of the 13th five-year plan, starting from 2016 until 2020, adding that the cost of building the tunnel is estimated to be around 220 billion yuan.