Sector brief: Transport & Logistics
High-speed rail may link 17 nations
March 22, 2010: Less than two years after China's first high-speed railway went into operation, the country is now planning to extend its rail network beyond its borders, a project that will involve 17 nations.
A Ministry of Railways spokesman confirmed to Global Times that an international rail network is planned which will boost the exchange of trade and promote China's newly acquired high-speed railway technology. It is hoped that it will be the next brand of "Made in China" comparable to world competitors.
Initial negotiations with some countries are already underway although there is no official news of what progress had been made or the details of the routes.
The information was first revealed by Wang Mengshu, a professor at Beijing Jiaotong University and a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, who said China plans to construct a high-speed railway system that will travel across Asia and Europe by 2025.
Wang Mengshu said that China began construction of the domestic part of one route, which will travel across Southeast Asia, several years ago. The line starts in Kunming in Yunnan Province and runs south, as far as Singapore. Negotiations with parties in Myanmar and Singapore have gone smoothly he said.
According to Wang Mengshu, a second route will start in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, and connect Central Asian countries such as Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan with Germany. A third line will connect the city of Heilongjiang in northern China with Eastern and Southern European countries via Russia.
English Peoples' Daily Online quoted Wang as saying, "Progress on the first route has been faster than the other two. Many problems such as discrepancies in track gauge, line direction and expense allocations are under discussion with the related countries."
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