At a late-July State Council Information Office press conference in the "Opening the New 15th Five-Year Plan" series, Vice Minister of Transport Xu Chengguang announced that during the 15th Five-Year Plan period (2026–2030), China will fully connect the land-based strategic backbone corridors of border routes G219 and G331 with the coastal backbone corridor G228. The three national highways, linked end to end, will form a "Golden Outer-Ring Highway" encircling China's border and coastline — roughly 27,000 kilometers in total length, about two-thirds of Earth's equatorial circumference.
During the 15th Five-Year Plan period (2026–2030), China will fully connect border land-based strategic backbone corridors G219 and G331 with coastal backbone corridor G228. The three national highways link end to end to form a “Golden Outer-Ring Highway” of roughly 27,000 km — about two-thirds of Earth's equatorial circumference — encircling China's border and coastline.
The Skeleton of the Three Routes
G219 runs from Kanas in Xinjiang in the north to Dongxing in Guangxi in the south, with a total length of more than 10,000 km. It traverses the provinces and regions of Xinjiang, Tibet, Yunnan and Guangxi, making it China's longest national highway and the highest-altitude road in the world on average. It runs along the western border and strings together a remarkable variety of landscapes — mountains, forests, grasslands, lakes, sand and sea.
G331 runs from Dandong in Liaoning in the east to Altay in Xinjiang in the west, with a total length of 9,333 km. It cuts across six provinces and regions — Liaoning, Jilin, Heilongjiang, Inner Mongolia, Gansu and Xinjiang — linking the Northeast Plain, Inner Mongolian grasslands, the Greater Khingan Range and Changbai Mountain, and has been described as "China's most beautiful border road."
G228 runs from Dandong in Liaoning in the north to Dongxing in Guangxi in the south, with a planned total length of about 7,400 km. It threads through ten provinces, municipalities and regions — Liaoning, Hebei, Tianjin, Shandong, Jiangsu, Shanghai, Zhejiang, Fujian, Guangdong and Guangxi — hugging China's eastern coastline and stringing the coastal port-city cluster into a chain like pearls on a thread.
Once the three highways are joined end to end into a closed loop, this “outer ring” will link more than a hundred Class I ports and coastal harbors, resolving the long-standing problem of “one-way dead-end roads” along the border and coast.
More Than Just Building Roads
Xu Chengguang noted that this outer ring will serve as a major corridor along China's border and coast, and as a key corridor for tourism, resource development, and border stability. Continuing to advance the construction of trans-regional, trans-basin corridors during the 15th Five-Year Plan period is no longer the simple “laying groundwork” or “launching new projects” of the past, he said — it is about optimizing the spatial layout, opening up the great arteries of economic circulation, and promoting balanced regional development.
By 2030, the construction rate of the main skeleton of the national comprehensive three-dimensional transportation network will rise from the current 91 percent to 95 percent. Once the Golden Outer-Ring Highway is fully built, it will coordinate with the Yangtze golden waterway, the Sichuan–Tibet railway and the Xinjiang–Tibet railway, forming a complete network of "outer ring + inland rivers + longitudinal trunk lines."
Progress on Key Sections
Targets for the key sections have already been set: over the next five years, priority will be given to breaking through mountain- and sea-crossing bottlenecks such as the G219 Zhaosu–Wensu section and the G228 Quanzhou Baiqi Channel, while upgrading the entire line in parallel. Roughly 7,400 km of construction and renovation are expected during the 15th Five-Year Plan period.
- The Zhaowen Highway: a north-south corridor through the Tianshan Mountains, 232.7 km in total length, started in 2023 and scheduled for completion in 2027
- The G331 Jilin section: the first section to be fully completed, serving as the benchmark stretch of the Golden Outer-Ring Highway. This 1,314-km border road strings together 12 national forest parks and 8 national nature reserves — a rich belt of ecological and cultural-tourism resources
“For residents along the route, border goods can now be transported smoothly, and public services will extend along with the road. For the state, this corridor will simultaneously secure the national security shield while smoothing the domestic and international dual-circulation.”
From Kanas to Dongxing, from Dandong to Altay, and then back along the coastline from Dandong to Dongxing — the 27,000-kilometer Golden Outer-Ring Highway weaves China's land borders and coastline into a single road network. It is both a backbone corridor in the physical sense and a systemic expression of the spatial and economic-circulation logic of the 15th Five-Year Plan period. The bill for road-building has never been settled on transportation alone.