THEY'RE calling it The New Silk Road: an ambitious plan by the Chinese to build two direct rail links to Europe, one from Beijing to London, the other from Beijing to Berlin, via a super high-speed train service travelling at almost half the cruising speed of a 747.
The Chinese Government, already in serious negotiations with 17 countries, also wants to build a third link through Burma, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore. It claims the Herculean task could be completed in as little as a decade and has offered to cough up the money for the infrastructure – in return for cut-price raw materials, which it can transport cheaply back to its manufacturing centres.
In January, China opened what it billed as the fastest rail service in the world – a bullet train travelling at a top speed of 350km/h between the cities of Guangzhou and Wuhan, slicing the previous journey time from 10 hours to just three. Within three years China will have 800 bullet trains criss-crossing its territory, and it is already in the throes of building high-speed rail lines in Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.
In a somewhat uncertain time for air travel, China appears to have decided high-speed rail offers a good back-up strategy for moving people and resources. Already its international building spree is outstripping that of colonial Britain, which cemented its economic power in India in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Like the lucrative silk and spice trade that opened up a link between Asia and Europe more than 2000 years ago, optimists argue that the giant railways will herald a new era of inter-connectedness between Europe and China.
The less dewy-eyed, however, worry about China’s greater ability to exploit resources in developing countries (a pipeline between Turkmenistan and China’s Xinjiang province will remove more than half of that country’s natural gas deposits, for example) and its growing influence in the Middle East (especially in troublesome Iran).
In short, a new silk road paving the way for 21st-century Chinese dominance.
