China aims to complete laying a 418 kilometer railway from a border town to Laos by 2020, the China Economic Herald reported over the weekend, as the economic giant seeks a new route into the emerging markets of Southeast Asia.
The two countries agreed on Friday to jointly build a 40 billion yuan ($6.28 billion) railway from the border town of Boten to the Laos capital of Vientiane, the Herald reported on Saturday.
The deal was announced at a signing ceremony attended by senior officials from the National Development and Reform Commission, the country's top economic planner, China Railway Corp and the Export-Import Bank of China, according to the report from the newspaper.
Laos, poor and landlocked, has traditionally been firmly in the orbit of its larger neighbor to the east, Vietnam.
But China has been aggressively courting Laos as it sees the country as an important route into Southeast Asia, and its ports on the Mekong River for landlocked parts of Southwest China such as Yunnan Province.
The railway, to be 70 percent funded by China and 30 percent by Laos, will eventually be connected with railroads to countries and regions such as Thailand and Malaysia, the paper said.
In October, the government of Yunnan Province announced an investment plan of more than 200 billion yuan in a pilot economic zone on the border with Laos.
That plan would include a range of industries such as energy, education and transport.
