China-funded railway electrification project underway in Iran
China has made another major step in its effort to export railway construction and operation technologies and to implement "the Belt and Road" initiative with the start of construction on a railway electrification project in Iran involving Chinese investments and technologies, experts said on Sunday.
The project electrifying the railway between the Iranian capital of Tehran and the holy city of Mashhad, Iran's primary pilgrimage site, has now entered its construction phase, domestic news portal china.com reported Sunday.
A consortium of Iranian and Chinese companies, including Iran's MAPNA Group and China's CMC and Su Power, will complete construction within 42 months and will maintain the railway for five years after construction, according to the china.com report.
Chinese and Iranian officials finalized the $2.1 billion deal in June 2015, with China contributing 85 percent of the cost and Iran covering the remainder, the report said.
The project will shorten travel time between Tehran and Mashhad to six hours from the current minimum of 12 hours and will increase freight capacity to 10 million tons every year.
While the deal marked a milestone in Iran's plan to upgrade and expand its railway system, it is also another major step in China's "go global" strategy for its rapidly advancing rail technologies, experts noted Sunday.
"This is definitely an important step in China's effort to export rail technologies," said Sun Zhang, a professor at Tongji University in Shanghai.
"Both high-speed rail construction projects and normal railway reconstruction projects such as electrification are crucial for the export of Chinese technologies," Sun noted.
He told the Global Times on Sunday that overseas high-speed rail projects have received a great deal of attention as more and more Chinese rail firms have gotten involved in such projects in recent years.
Increasing involvement overseas
China is involved in multiple overseas high-speed rail projects that are currently under construction, including a $5.5 billion project in Indonesia to connect capital city Jakarta to West Java province's capital of Bandung, a 470-kilometer railway between China and Laos, an 800-kilometer railway in Thailand, and a 300-kilometer railway between Hungary and Serbia, according to a statement posted on the website of the State Council Information Office on February 3.
Additionally, a number of high-speed rail projects with Chinese involvement are set to start construction soon, including one in the US that would connect the western cities of Las Vegas and Los Angeles and which is expected to begin as early as September.
Experts said increasing Chinese involvement in overseas rail projects, particularly high-speed rail projects, shows that Chinese technologies in these areas are gaining global recognition.
"Chinese technologies for the construction and operation of high-speed railways are the new face of 'Made in China,'" Wang Mengshu, a railway expert at the Chinese Academy of Engineering, told the Global Times on Sunday.
Relatively low costs, faster delivery and proven reliability have all helped Chinese rail firms compete in overseas markets, he noted.
Chinese involvement in rail projects in countries along "the Belt and Road" routes is also crucial to the implementation of the initiative, which ultimately aims to more closely connect China to Africa and Europe, Sun noted.
However, Sun said, there are also challenges presented by Chinese rail firms' involvement in rail projects overseas, as demands and conditions vary in different countries.
"Some countries want faster trains, while other countries want trains that carry more goods," Sun said, noting that different construction standards and a lack of well-trained local train operators could also add to the challenges.
Chinese rail firms need to be more flexible in meeting different demands and adapting to local conditions while introducing uniform Chinese standards of rail construction and operation to these countries, Sun said.
