The rail line seeks to facilitate travel across Europe and Asia, Beijing’s municipal government said Jan. 21 in a post on Weibo, China’s equivalent of Twitter. The journey from Beijing to Moscow would take “two days” on a route passing through Kazakhstan, the post said.
The proposed rail line comes as Russia’s economy struggles to recover from the fall in the price of crude oil and as relations with the U.S. and Europe deteriorate over the Ukraine conflict, and as China pushes to market its high-speed rail technology internationally.
The rail line was mooted in November, after Russia and China last year agreed on the largest natural-gas supply deal in history.
Alexander Misharin, a first vice-president at state-owned OAO Russian Railways, said in a Nov. 18 interview that the plan would cost $60 billion to reach Russia’s border, and would cut the Beijing-Moscow journey from five days to 30 hours .... http://www.bloomberg.com
