Liaoning has sound infrastructures, including ports, airports, railroads, highways and communications, making it one of China's provinces with advanced transportation and telecommunications industry. The transportation network in the province is composed of trunk railroads with the capital city of Shenyang at the center, trunk highways composed of national highways, provincial roads and expressways, as well as heavy-caliber oil pipelines, a flight network featured by modernized airports, and ports cluster with Dalian at the front and Dandong, Yingkou, Jinzhou and Huludao at the wings. In 2004, the volume of goods transport reached 299.99 billion tons/km, up 23.6 percent from last year.

Railroads

Liaoning leads China in the railroad density.There are not only trunk railroads that are administered by the Ministry of Railways include the Changchun-Dalian Railway, Shenyang-Shanhaiguan Railway, Shenyang-Jilin Railway, Shenyang-Dandong Railway, Dahushan-Zhengjiatun Railway and Jinzhou-Chengde Railway but also trunk railroads that are administered by the local authority concerned include Chengzidan-Zhuanghe Railway, Haicheng-Youyan Railway and Dandong-Dalian Railway. Besides, there are railroads built specially for Bayuquan Harbor and Jinzhou Harbor.

Highways

Highways ramify across the Liaoning Province. In 2004, the traffic mileage of the province was 52,415 km, up 4.6 percent over the previous year; among which the expressway mileage was 1,637 km. All townships in the province have asphalt roads, and all the cities directly under the provincial government and 90 percent of the counties are connected with expressways, thus forming two major channels, with one running from Dalian in the south to Siping in the north, extending 565 km, and the other starting from Dandong in the east to Shanhaiguan in the west, extending 622 km. Liaoning takes the lead in the country to have connected all the cities directly under the provincial government through expressways and constructed asphalt roads in every township. All the towns in the province can be reached via passenger buses.

Water Transportation

There are 10 harbors of different sizes in the province, including Dalian Harbor, Yingkou Harbor, Dandong Harbor and Jinzhou Harbor. A port cluster with distinct functions and full combination has taken shape, constituting a maritime door for the three northeast provinces and east Inner Mongolia. In the cluster, there are 258 port berths with an annual handling capacity of 241.60 million tons of cargoes in 2003, an increase of 24.8 percent over 2003. This includes 76.83 million tons of foreign trade goods, an increase of 5.3 percent. Dalian Harbor has become China's seventh international port whose cargo-handling capacity exceeds 100 million tons a year. The province's domestic navigation routes by sea have reached all the major ports in the country, and its international navigation routes connect it with over 300 ports in 50-plus countries and regions.

Civil Aviation

There are five civil airports in Liaoning, among which Shenyang Taoxian Airport and Dalian Zhoushuizi Airport are China's first-class international airports. In the province, 168 regular domestic and international flight routes are in the operation, among them 15 international and inter-regional routes. The total mileage of flight traffic reaches close to 200,000 km and the flight destinations include 37 domestic cities and such countries and regions as Japan, DPRK, Russia, ROK, USA, Australia, Thailand, Singapore and Hong Kong. In 2004, the province's volume of passenger transportation by civil aviation reached 8.85 billion people per km (an increase of 32 percent), while the volume of cargo transportation by air reached 170 million tons per km (an increase of 8.5 percent).

Posts and Telecommunications

The posts and telecommunications industry of Liaoning enjoys advanced development and has completed the transformation from automation to program-control, simulation and digitalization, forming a telecommunication transmission network where local calls, long-distance calls, microwave, optical fiber and satellites coordinate and complement. In 2004, the total value of completed post and telecommunication business was 37.26billion Yuan RMB, up 38.2 percent from last year. The value of telecommunication business reached 35.2 1billion Yuan RMB, while that of postal business reached 2.05 billion Yuan RMB. Some 140 million pieces of letters were delivered; 7.441 million pieces of letters and documents are delivered in express manner, up 20.91percent; and the total capacity of telephone exchanges of the province was 15.413 million lines, up 8.1 percent from last year. There are 14.863 million users of fixed telephones, and the popularity rates of fixed telephone usage in urban and rural areas were respectively 45.5 sets/person and 202.2sets/person. There are 9.791 million users of home telephones, up 1.0 percent from last year and accounting for 65.9 percent of the users of fixed telephones in the province. The number of users of mobile phones reached 11.809 million at the end of 2004, up 22.6percent over the previous year; and the number of Internet subscribers adds up to 4.489 million, up 17.3 percent.