At midnight on October 28, a train pulled out from the Kunming South Railway Station and arrived in Yuxi 30 minutes later . This trip marked a successful test run on one section of the China-Laos International Railway.

The 88-kilometre Kunming-Yuxi section is expected to shorten travel time between the two cities to 30 minutes when it opens to public traffic by the end of this year. The railway has a designed target test speed of 200 kilometres per hour.

In addition, the China-Laos Friendship Tunnel is currently undergoing busy construction work. The tunnel is an important part of the international railway linking China and Laos. It is a 9.68-kilometre cross-border tunnel, of which 7.17 kilometres are in China and 2.51 kilometres in Laos.

The China-Laos Railway consists of three sections —Kunming-Yuxi, Yuxi-Mohan and Boten-Vientiane, and 418 kilometres of track will be in Laos.