China is planning to build a 7,000 km-long high-speed railway line, costing $250 billion, between Moscow and Beijing through Central Asia to provide a fast transport link between the neighbouring countries.
The railway line will pass through China, Kazakhstan and Russia and cover more than 7,000 km, more than three times the world’s current longest high-speed line, from the Chinese capital to the southern city of Guangzhou, China News Service quoted Beijing Municipal government as saying.
The project would cost more than 1.5 trillion yuan, $250 billion.
High-speed railways passing across the Korean Peninsula in Northeast Asia and linking China with West Asia as well as South Asia, are also on the schedule, it said.
China is banking on rapid expansion of its high speed rail technology abroad including India as part of its new economic restructuring to deal with its slowing economy which slid to 7.4 per cent last year, the lowest in last 24 years.
China is due to conduct a feasibility study on the 1,754 km-long Chennai-New Delhi high-speed rail corridor. When completed, it would be the world’s second largest bullet train line after China’s 2,298 km-long Beijing-Guangzhou line which was launched last year.
The communist giant has agreed to conduct the study free of cost during President Xi Jinping’s visit to India in September last year.
In November last year, China signed its largest overseas project worth about $11.97 billion with Nigeria to build a railway line along the African country’s coast.
Beijing is also pushing aggressively such projects in Latin America.
