Most of the roads are rented to private bus companies. On the average the bus company charges $022 Kwangsi money for each passenger-t Owing to the high price of petrol, most of the buses use charcoal fuel as in Kwangsi 100 catties of chat coal costs about $1 Kwangsi. There} are now about 600 cars, oficial arid private, in the whole of Kwangsi. The Highway Administration can barely support itself as for the present, most of the profit is being used to buy new ears and therefore the roads are not kept up as they should be and also some of the money is spent buying back roads formerly rented to private concerns.
Cars or trucks owned by companies and using roads constructed by the provincial government, must pay for! years forty per cent, and for trucks, twenty. percent. of their respective incomes as the road maintenance fee. Recently a new regulation was issued that all cars must be licensed and commercial cars with five seats, the Hicense fee is $180 each (Kwangsi money), for 1'é-ton buses $350 and for Weston trucks $200. Garages and repairing shops are to be found in Nanling, Liu-chow, Ne Shen and Kwel-ling.
The upkeep of the ferry boats and the rebuilding of bridges is worth consideration. Our party went 1o Aifferent mines to study conditions and as we-travelled one day from Chung Shan by motor car back to Liu Chow, we had to cross the rivers by ferry boats eleven times. Our parly was a large one and there were 2 number of cars engaged for the trip so that a good deal of time was spent in crossing the rivers by ferry. To every boat there were at least four men rowing and steering, some boats even requiring more than ten men. This needs a large maintenance fee, taking the depreciation of the ferry boats also into account.
Tt is found in the highways of China that every linea foot of ordinary bridge costs only $100 to $150 with very little maintenance fee. Compared with the ferry boat system may be cheaper. If bridges be built over narrow streams in Kiwangsl, communication will be much improved.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.