LONDON, (KUNA): China railway to connect all major Asian and European cities by high speed rail. China is in negotiations to build a high-speed rail network to India and Europe with trains that are capable of running at over 200mph within the next ten years, it was revealed here Tuesday.
The network would eventually carry passengers from London to Beijing and then to Singapore, the Daily Telegraph newspaper reported. It would also run to India and Pakistan, according to Wang Mengshu, a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and a senior consultant on China's domestic high-speed rail project.
A second project would see trains heading north through Russia to Germany and into the European railway system, and a third line will extend south to connect Vietnam, Thailand, Burma and Malaysia. Passengers could board a train in London and step off in Beijing, 5,070 miles away as the crow flies, in just two days. They could go on to Singapore, 6,750 miles away, within three days. "We are aiming for the trains to run almost as fast as airplanes," Wang told the paper. "The best case scenario is that the three networks will be completed in a decade," he added.
Wang said that China was already in negotiations with 17 countries over the rail lines, which will draw together and open up the whole of Central, East and South East Asia. Wang said the network would also allow China to transport valuable cargoes of raw materials more efficiently. "
It was not China that pushed the idea to start with," said Wang. "It was the other countries that came to us, especially India. These countries cannot fully implement the construction of a high-speed rail network and they hoped to draw on our experience and technology," he said. China is in the middle of a 480 billion pounds domestic railway expansion project that aims to build nearly 19,000 miles of new railways in the next five years, connecting all of its major cities with high-speed lines.
The world's fastest train, "the Harmony Express" which has a top speed of nearly 250mph, was unveiled at the end of last year, between the cities of Wuhan and Guangzhou.
