Uzbekistan has just recently completed the longest railway tunnel in Central Asia. It's one of the landmark projects on the Silk Road Economic Belt.
It's the longest railway tunnel in Central Asia. The journey from Uzbekistan's capital Tashkent to its southeastern regions has now been reduced from four days to four hours.
"The tunnel is impressive. In the past, trains traveling southeast had to first go to another country, Tajikstan, in order to get around the high mountains. The trouble was not just about distance, but also complicated procedures in crossing the borders."
The 20-kilometer-long tunnel was built in three years by a Chinese company, the China Railway Tunnel Group. It was completed six months ahead of schedule. Along the way, engineers faced challenging geological hurdles including spontaneous fractures of rock.
"Rock burst is like a hidden bomb that might explode at any time and any place. When it happens, rocks and stones would splash all over the place. What's worse, there is still no technology to accurately predict the time, place or magnitude of the burst. During our construction, we could only try our best to reduce the possibility and damage," Zhou Xiaoguang, project manager of China Railway Tunnel Group, said.
Zhou Xiaoguang says they encountered rock bursts several times, including one time involving thousands of cubic meters of rocks. More than 800 workers were involved in the project.
"After we joined the construction, we were not only offered higher wages, but we also learned new skills."
The 450-million dollar project was largely paid for with loans from China. It's the first step toward building what President Xi Jinping describes as "a logistic corridor from the Pacific to the Baltic Sea."
"The world's major commercial banks will seldom give loans to these countries, because they can hardly pass the rigid risk assessment. China's Import and Export Bank is more flexible, because it's a state-owned, policy-oriented bank, which does not aim for short-term returns. China will be rewarded much more in a longer term, if the logistics corridor can be built up," Liu Liange, chairman of Import-Export Bank of China, said.
Uzbekistan was one of the first countries to back President Xi Jinping's Belt and Road initiative. This landlocked country hopes cooperating with China to improve its infrastructure will lead to a boost in global trade.
