Yunnan entering the high-speed rail era
The other day, Fenghuang Mountain Tunnel, the last tunnel along the Yunnan section of the Shanghai-Kunming High-Speed Passenger Railway, was completed, laying the foundation for the opening of the whole railway line and marking an important step towards establishing Yunnans high-speed rail era.
The Shanghai-Kunming High-Speed Railway covers 2,264 kilometres in total. Travelling east-to-west from Shanghai to Kunming, the rail artery is a high-speed passenger track designed with a cruising speed of 250-350 kilometres per hous (350 kph for the Shanghai-Changsha section, and 250 kph for the Changsha-Kunming section). The main tracks of Yunnan section extend for 184.7 kilometres and enter Yunnan via Panxian County, Guizhou Province. Fenghuang Mountain Tunnel is in Fuyuan County, Yunnan, and runs a total length of 3,973 metres.
As a land transport artery connecting Yunnan with east China, the Shanghai-Kunming High-Speed Railway will also help to link China with South and Southeast Asia. When the New Kunming South Station is completed and goes into operation in June 2016, Yunnan will officially enter a new high-speed rail era and become the converging point of four major transport channels. These are the Lanzhou-Kunming channel, the Shanghai-Kunming channel, the South Coast and Southwest channel and the Trans-Asian Railway.
Upon the expected opening of New Kunming South Station, a train departing from Kunming will travel to Changsha in four hours, and Shanghai in eight. By then, the land transport artery will connect Yunnan with the east coast of China. Moreover, it will connect the entire country via Chengdu and Changsha, thus invigorating the development of Yunnan on a high-speed track.
According to the Bangkok Post, Geoff Wade of the Asia-Pacific Institute, Australian National University, said that the impact of this high-speed railway could permanently alter Southeast Asia and its way of doing business. The Australian Strategic Policy Institute believes People in continental countries will soon find that with the convenience of high-speed rail, Kunming has become their nearest neighbour, within a few hours ride.
Yunnan is at the junction of the Chinese Economic Circle, the Southeast Asian Economic Circle and the South Asian Economic Circle, and is also a pivot point in the One Belt and One Road initiative, the Yangtze River Economic Belt and other national development strategies. As an international passageway connecting China with South and Southeast Asia, the province boasts abundant agricultural, tourist, natural and educational resources. Yunnan and Shanghai, both priority areas in the implementation of the One Belt and One Road initiative, the Yangtze River Economic Belt and other national development strategies, share broad prospects for cooperation and huge room for win-win development. Through further development in Yunnan, Shanghai enterprises can not only explore western Chinese markets, but also quickly enter the Southeast Asian, South Asian, West Asian, Southern European and African markets. In recent years, Yunnan has attached great importance to its economic cooperation with Shanghai and promoting the development of Shanghai enterprises in the province. So far, major projects undertaken by several Shanghai companies in Yunnan have been progressing smoothly and have achieved good results. By the end of 2014, Shanghai enterprises had implemented more than 1,000 economic cooperation projects in Yunnan, involving a total investment of 47 billion yuan.
