China will invest 15 billion yuan (1.875 billion U.S. dollars) in the next five years to modernize the Yangtze River waterway, the world's third longest river with a length of over 6300 km, Li Shenglin, minister of Communications said in Nanjing Tuesday.

The money will be mainly used for waterway management, port construction, shipbuilding standardization and shipping security projects, Li said at a meeting held in Nanjing, East China's Jiangsu Province.

The Yangtze River is China's longest and the world's third longest river. It has overtaken the Mississippi and the Rhine to become the world's No. 1 inland waterway in terms of shipping capacity.

Construction of the Yangtze golden waterway, an integral part of China's 11th Five-Year Plan (2006-2010), is at a key juncture, the minister said.

Inland waterway transportation has the advantages of low cost, low energy consumption, low pollution and high shipping capacity.

Total shipping capacity on the Yangtze River is equal to that of four to six rail routes of the same length, while shipping costs are only one-sixth that of the railways, one-28th that of highways and one-78th that of airplanes.

China's fast economic growth, shortages of energy and resources and increasing environmental pressure have given the Yangtze River a new opportunity, he said.

Shanghai, Chongqing, Sichuan, Yunnan, Hubei, Hunan, Jiangxi, Anhui and Jiangsu provincial areas along the river produce more than 41 percent of the country's gross domestic product. Their surging export-oriented economy has increased the importance of the golden waterway.

The Yangtze River now handles 80 percent of the iron ore, 72 percent of the crude oil, and 83 percent of the coal produced by enterprises along the river.

By the end of this year, shipping capacity on the Yangtze River is expected to hit 990 million tons, and will grow to 1.3 billion tons by the year 2010, according to Li.

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