President Hu Jintao met with German chancellor Angela Merkel in Beijing to sign a Sino-German cooperation agreement on a new Shanghai-Hangzhou maglev line.

With a total length of 197 kilometers, the Shanghai-Hangzhou maglev train will travel up to 450 kilometers per hour.

Construction work on the Shanghai-Hangzhou maglev is expected to begin by the end of the year and be completed by 2010.

The total cost of the project is estimated at RMB35 billion.