China's National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the top economic planning body, gave approval Friday to the building of a batch of inter-city rail transit networks spanning more than 2,000 kilometers in a bid to promote regional integration.

New inter-city lines with a total length of 496 kilometers would be built in central China's Henan Province over the next ten years, a report of the China Daily said Saturday.

The NDRC also approved amended plans to build 1,478 kilometers of rail networks between cities across the Pearl River Delta region until 2020, said the report.

Further, cities including Xi'an in northwest China's Shaanxi Province and Nanning in the southwestern Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region also received approvals from the NDRC to expand their rail lines.

(Xinhua News Agency August 14, 2010)