Archive for the 'Links' Category

There is concern in India about the expansion of the port at Gwadar in Pakistan. This, even though the port will be under the management to Singapore Port Authority which last year won a bid to operate the port for 40 years and even though China did not bid to operate the port. India has expressed serious concern about the port and its possibilities.

Indian Naval Chief, Admiral Sureesh Mehta said last week that the Gwadar port has ’serious strategic implications for India.’

He said, ‘Being only 180 nautical miles from the exit of the Straits of Hormuz, Gwadar, being bulit in Baluchistan coast, would enable Pakistan take control over the world energy jugular and interdiction of Indian tankers.’

This statement chimes with US Colonel Christopher J. Pehrson’s study called: String of Pearls: Meeting the Challenge of China’s Rising Power Across the Asian Littoral.

Admiral Mehta said that China is seeking to set up bases and outposts across the globe, strategically located along its energy lines, to monitor and safeguard energy flows.

Col. Pehron argues that the ‘String of Pearls’ describes the manifestation of China’s rising geopolitical influence through efforts to increase access to ports and airfields, develop special diplomatic relationships, and modernize military forces that extend from the South China Sea through the Strait of Malacca, across the Indian Ocean, and on to the Arabian Gulf.

Having said that the cost benefits to China of using Gwadar as the port for western China’s imports and exports are as evident as the long-term economic benefits to Pakistan of Gwadar becoming a port for Chinese goods.

The whole argument appears in full, with perhaps an anti-Chinese, pro-American bias in Source.
Source: Counter Currents

Understand that this is not new. It happens already. But not quickly. Not often. Not in a planned manner.

Now China and five other nations are to cooperate on a train link between Asia and Europe.

China, Mongolia, Russia, Belarus, Poland and Germany have signed an agreement that will speed up transport of goods and cargo between Asia and China and halve current traveling time by sea.

The treaty aims to simplify customs and border checks.

Zheng Mingli, chairman of China Railway Container Transport, said, ‘Barring any complications, a scheduled container train should be shuttling between China and Germany in a year’s time.’

The route, which will link Beijing and Hamburg, is expected to boost trade and cargo flows between the two continents and would allow goods to be delivered in a record 18 days. Currently, delivery of cargo by sea between the two destinations takes about 40 days.

A test container train carrying a load of Chinese goods, including electrical appliances, clothes, shoes and ceramic tiles has already rolled out of Beijing and is expected to arrive in Hamburg in 18 days.

The problem will be whether any border officials, seeing a quid to be made, start to interfere. If they are sorted — and that will not be an easy task — it will change the face of freight although bear in mind when it comes to sheer volume a ship has it all over a train. On the other hand the train is, as it where, ready packaged for delivery.
Source: DW-World

Approval has been given for a bridge connecting Shanghai’s Chongming Island and Jiangsu Province. The plan is part of a regional strategy to further integrate Shanghai with neighboring Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces.

The bridge will span 7 km of the Yangtze River, linking Shanghai’s Chongming Island to the city of Qidong in Jiangsu.

The Shanghai section will be linked to an ongoing project connecting mainland Shanghai with Chongming Island by tunnel, bridge and expressway.

It is hoped that it will be completed by 2009 when it will cut travel time between Pudong and Chongming to 20 minutes. It would also cut travel time between Shanghai and Qidong to just over an hour and put any major city in Jiangsu Province within three hours’ drive from the municipality.

According to the city’s Labor Daily, construction on a bridge between Chongming and Qidong would officially start next year and finish in 2010. The construction would eventually become part of a highway network connecting Shanghai and Xi’an, Shaanxi Province.
Source: People’s Daily Online

Two new railway lines have been started in Fujian Province on the southeastern coast. When completed the will cut travel times between the coastal and inland areas.

One of the railways starts in Xiamen, a port city facing Taiwan, and runs 502.4 kilometers southwest along the coast to Shenzhen, boom city of southern Guangdong Province.

Upon its completion in 2011, the railway will allow trains to travel at up to 200 kilometers per hour, and a journey between the two cities will take less than three hours compared with the current 11.

The RMB41.7 billion (US$5.6 billion) construction cost will be shared by the Ministry of Railways, and the Fujian and Guangdong provincial governments.

The second major rail project is a 603.6-km railway linking Nanchang, capital of the central Jiangxi Province, with Fujian Province, with terminals in both Fuzhou and Putian.

The RMB51.8 billion railway will open to traffic in 2012, ‘the first modern railway’ to link Fujian Province with the hinterland, said Yu Kaiyang, director of the provincial railway construction office.

He said the new line will cut traveling distance between Fujian and Jiangxi by at least 17 km. The illustration brings to mind Edward Thomas and his splendid poem on Adlestrop:

Yes, I remember Adlestrop
The name because one afternoon
Of heat the express-train drew up there
Unwontendly. It was late June.

With the new lines there will be express trains. They will not be pulling up un-wontedly.
Source: Window of China

No, it has not happened and no one is making any official suggestion that it is even on the cards. But the recent demonstration of trains running between North and South Korea is a step — even if only on a one-off test basis — a big step in the right direction.

There are hopes are for regular trains to start carrying workers to the industrial center at Kaesong, and for tourists to be able to use the trains for visiting Mount Kumgang in the east. No North Korean visitors to the South would be expected until there is a radical change in politics — but it could happen.

The railway between the North Korean port of Najin and the Russian town of Khasan needs repairs and impovements and this is being considered by the Russians who would like to develop the port into a logistics hub and and future oil and gas terminal. The port is also close to the Chinese border and Beijing has promised Pyongyang $1 billion to improve the port and the railway as well.

According to Senior Executive Director of Korail, 2008 is the target for introduction of through-trains between Seoul and China. Well, yes, but if the North Koreans are not willing to play ball it is not going to happen. And their recognition of the first trains to cross was very muted.

But it could happen and should reduce transportation costs for South Korean exporters. And maybe, just maybe, the rail system will open up and the station at Dorasan will see some cross border passengers.
Source: Seoul Man