Amid rapid economic expansion, infrastructure construction in Zhanjiang, Guangdong province, achieved further progress in the first half of 2017.

The city recorded 58.9 billion yuan ($8.69 billion) in gross domestic product in the first quarter of the year, an increase of 8 percent from the same period last year.

In the first five months, large and medium-sized industrial enterprises' gross profit increased 7.1 percent to 31.4 billion yuan. Government revenue surged roughly 30 percent to 23 billion yuan.

Transport has been the bottleneck for Zhanjiang's growth, but the government is vigorously improving it. It invested 2.73 billion yuan in transport infrastructure construction from January to May this year, up about 37 percent year-on-year.

The Overseas Chinese Town - a State-owned tourism, culture and real estate enterprise - plans to invest 100 billion yuan to build a first-class highway circling the coast of the Leizhou Peninsula, where the city is located.

The Donghai Island Railway, a crucial part of the west coast high-speed rail project in Guangdong, is due to be completed by the end of September. The railway will provide strong support to the city's key projects, such as the steel facility established by Baosteel Group and the Zhanjiang government.

In addition, a high-speed railway linking the city with Guangzhou is also due to be completed in June 2018.

Construction on a new airport will kick of this October. In the first five months, the existing Zhanjiang Airport served 839,000 passengers, up 34 percent.