China Planning To Build Undersea Train To America

Is China planning to build a huge train network between Beijing and the United States? According to a report in the Beijing Times, yes. The report cites an expert at the Chinese Academy of Engineering, where it is said that Chinese officials are considering a route from Beijing, through eastern Siberia, across the Bering Straight and into Alaska. This would be a monumental engineering challenge, most importantly due to the 125 mile long underwater tunnel that would be required to connect the Bering Strait and Alaska. This network would span around 8,000 miles, making it 1,800 miles longer than the Trans-Siberian railroad.

“Right now we’re already in discussions. Russia has already been thinking about this for many years,” says Wang Mengshu, the engineer cited in the article.

A lot of things would have to go right for this plan to get to the realms of reality, but according to China Daily, the country does have the technology to complete a construction project of this scale. With China laying down tens of thousands of miles of new track, including a massive network of ultra-fast trains, they’re likely the best qualified in the world to understand modern rail networks and be able to put their ideas into practice.

Thank you WashingtonPost for providing us with this information.

Image courtesy of WashingtonPost.