Berlin to Beijing by rail ?
March 7, 2010 by Jules
Opening 2025
Comments this week end by Wang Mengshu, professor at Beijing Jiaotong University, a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and a member of every high speed rail project in China since network redevelopment started, are widely picked on in the international press this morning.
In essence, China has long been interested in opening a road and rail link to Myanmar in order to help with the development of its underdeveloped western areas, starting with Sichuan and Yunnan provinces. The route opens up access to a sea port in Myanmar that is being built with Chinese financing. The flip side of the coin is access to Myanmar's natural resources. The generals running the country are happy for the support they get from Beijing, no questions asked.
Indeed, the best word do describe Chinese international relations strategy is clientelism. It is very efficient. We refer you to our previous article on the use of this same strategy in Africa, from Algeria to Zimbabwe, but really the practice dates back centuries, when gifts were sent to other kingdoms in exchange for recognition of Beijing's superiority and a fair bit of tribute.
The rail links build on the same ambitious project, then some:
- a rail link from Kunming, Yunnan province to Singapore via Myanmar, Vietnam, Thailand and Malaysia.
- another from Urumqi, in Xinjiang province to Kazakhstan, Kyrgystan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. It would possibly extend all the way to Germany.
- Iran, India and Pakistan are also in talks with China for the building of high speed rail lines
With a target completion date of 2025, China is insisting on a couple of interesting standards:
- chinese gauge railroads. Remarkably, Vietnam has already agreed to this. Other countries are still in discussions on the matter, which delays deployment a bit. Of course China provides all financing for the projects and a lot of the manpower also (see our previous article), in barter for natural resources.
- chinese standard trains (based on the current high speed trains running amongst others the WuHan - GuangZhou line)
The last word to Wang: "China's overseas high-speed rail projects serve two purposes. First, we need to develop the western regions. Secondly, we need natural resources. We foresee that in the coming decades, hundreds of millions of people will migrate to the western regions, where land is empty and resources are untapped.
"With the fast, convenient transport of high-speed trains, people will set up mines, factories and business centres in the west. They will trade with Central Asian and Eastern European countries.
"Meanwhile, resources from those countries will stream into China to sustain development. I call it high-speed rail diplomacy."
In: Market News