Chinese state-owned Greenland Holding Group, Shanghai Construction Group Co. and CCB Trust Co. have plans to set up a subway transportation fund to support the development of transit lines in Chinese cities.

The fund's initial deployment will be CNY24 billion (US$3.91 billion) and it will have a final size of CNY100 billion (US$16.32 billion). The fund will be also supported by asset management units of Chinese insurers including

• China Pacific Insurance,
• the People's Insurance Company of China (PICC),
• Ping An Insurance,
• China Taiping Insurance Co. and
• CCB Life Insurance Company.

The fund, which is expected to encourage rail traffic investment of up to CNY300 billion (US$49 billion), will help to increase the number of Chinese cities with subways to a total of 50 by 2020 with about 6000 km of lines in operation.

Greenland Holding will be responsible for the development of a list of suitable project to be supported by the fund. The fund will invest, among others, in projects that adopt a public private partnership (PPP) model.

China has plans to push the use of PPP projects to increase private investment in the country. Two days ago we reported that China published a list of 1043 PPP projects in 29 areas on the database launched by China's National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC).