Train link creates a web of prosperity

An aerial photo taken in July shows the China-Laos Railway's Mohan train station in Yunnan province. The station is the last stop in China before the railway crosses the border to enter Laos. [Yang Zixuan/For China Daily]

China-Laos Railway connects with global transportation network, improving lives on both sides of border

A Chinese saying has it that if you want to get rich, build a road first.

Mohan, a far-flung town deep in the southern part of Southwest China's Yunnan province, now has more than a road. To its advantage, it also has, as the result of hard work over the past decade, the China-Laos Railway.

The rail line not only links Mohan with the rest of China, but with the outside world as well, including Laos and other countries in Southeast Asia. As a result, the border town has become a "frontier" of transportation links.

"With the opening of the railway, the high mountains are no longer high and the long journeys are no longer long from Kunming to Vientiane," President Xi Jinping said on Dec 3 when he witnessed, along with Laotian President Thongloun Sisoulith, the ceremonial opening of the China-Laos Railway via video link.

The railway is 1,035 kilometers long, and its trains have a design speed of 160 kilometers per hour. The rail line runs from Kunming, the capital of Yunnan, and passes through 13 passenger and freight stations in the province before leaving China at the Mohan land port, continuing on to Vientiane, the Laotian capital. There are 10 stations along the Laos section of the rail line.

As of early August, the China-Laos Railway had carried over 5.5 million travelers, according to China Railway Kunming Group.

Among those who have seen direct benefits from the rail line is Yan Dongkai, 26, a farmer who lives in a village in Mengla county that was formerly inaccessible. He made ends meet through growing rice, corn crops and rubber trees. Mengla, in which the town of Mohan is located, is famous for its rubber trees.

The China-Laos Railway changed the situation dramatically for Yan and others.

"It takes only five hours to reach Kunming by riding the China-Lao Railway," Yan said. "People in our village are finding odd jobs in the railway stations and related projects and are living a better life."

Yan now works as a porter in his free time, earning more than 3,000 yuan ($450) a month in additional income.

The land port within the jurisdiction of Mohan is on China's border with Laos and offers convenient land passage to Southeast Asia. The Mohan train station is the last stop in China before the China-Laos Railway crosses the border. The station is surrounded by villages of ethnic minority people such as the Dai and Hani.

Yibofeng, a 24-year-old woman of the Dai ethnic group, who lives in Xishuangbanna in the southwest tip of Yunnan, studied the Laotian language at a Kunming-based technical college before working as a train conductor on the Chinese part of the China-Laos Railway.

"It took me two days to go to the college by bus. It was really a rough journey," she said.

Now it takes only six hours for people in Yibofeng's village to travel to Kunming using the railway.

Previously, Yibofeng's mother was able to sell her handmade Dai garments only in adjacent villages. Now, thanks to the railway, her garments have found a market in Kunming.

Workers carry goods in March outside a supermarket in Muang Xay, the largest city in northern Laos. The city has seen an increase in trade with China after the opening of the China-Laos Railway. [Wang Jianwei/Xinhua]

'Helpful to our lives'

On the other side of the border, Thepmoukda Phetsalath, a 27-year-old Laotian, is a translator at the Laos-China Electricity Investment Co in Vientiane. She graduated from Tongji University in Shanghai in 2019.

"The China-Laos Railway will offer Laotians a lot of opportunities and is very helpful to our lives," Thepmoukda said.

"It only takes three hours from Vientiane to Boten, the first stop through which the China-Laos Railway enters my country, cutting the travel time by half," she added.

For Thepmoukda's relatives, who had previously never seen a train, the railway "is a life-changing experience", she said.

On July 1, a track change station was opened in Vientiane, creating a link between the China-Laos Railway and the Laos-Thailand Railway, according to the Vientiane Times.

Chanthone Sithixay, chairman of Vientiane Logistics Park Co, called the rail link "a new milestone" in freight transit and transportation between the 10 member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and China, the world's second-largest economy.

The link "will streamline the transportation system and save time and money", he said. "This offers huge advantages to businesses in Laos, China and Thailand as well as other business operators across the region."

As part of the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative, the China-Laos Railway also connects to the China-Europe Railway Express, linking ASEAN nations to European markets through a cost-effective transportation system.

Yuan Minghao, general manager of China-Laos Railway Co, said that as the China-Laos Railway heads north, it connects to rail networks that reach major Chinese cities including Chengdu, Sichuan province; Chongqing municipality; Wuhan, Hubei province; and Xi'an, Shaanxi province, as well as many logistics distribution centers in China and along the route of the China-Europe rail line.

Heading south, the railway links the transportation networks that reach several major ports, including Thailand's Laem Chabang Port and Singapore.

"Over time, (the railway and connected networks) will become a new land and sea transport link and connectivity route," Yuan said.

Panya Paputsaro, president of Thailand-based Kaocharoen Train Transport Co, said he was able to cut transportation costs by up to 40 percent when shipping containers by rail from Thailand to Europe, compared with the cost to transport by sea.

Meanwhile, something more than the railway is turning Mohan into a bustling town.

On August 31, 2015, as witnessed by President Xi and then Laotian president Choummaly Sayasone, the agreement for the Mohan-Boten Economic Cooperation Zone was signed on behalf of the two countries.

Customs officers from Mengla county in Yunnan inspect flower exports at the Mohan land port in July. [Zhang Xinyue/For China Daily]

Facilitating investment

China and Laos decided to build and develop the zone on the border between Yunnan and Laos' province of Namtha. It is the second cross-border economic cooperation zone established by China and a bordering country; the first was the China-Kazakhstan Horgos International Frontier Cooperation Center.

The Mohan-Boten Economic Cooperation Zone will promote the economic complementarity of the two countries, facilitate trade investment, promote industrial cooperation and accelerate the development of the border area of the two countries.

As a result, Mohan is being transformed from a "backwater" area to a "bridgehead" of China's socioeconomic development within the specific context of the country's antipoverty campaign.

Ai Xiang, chairman of the Standing Committee of the Mohan Township People's Congress, has worked in the town for 27 years.

"There were 10,000 residents living in Mohan 10 years ago, when the town was not easily accessible, and people could hardly make ends meet," said Ai, who added that the annual income of a local household at that time was 8,000 yuan.

"In the past decade, we now have a highway and a railway," Ai said. "All the 66 villages of the town are now accessible by asphalt or concrete roads."

The town now has a population of 25,000, with per capita income of 14,000 yuan a year.

With the advantages of a shorter transportation time, lower logistics costs and higher safety and environmental protection, international freight via the China-Laos Railway has developed rapidly.

International freight trains from more than 20 cities are quickly cleared through customs. The transportation network connects the Bohai Economic Rim, the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta, and it covers Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and other Southeast Asian countries.

The cooperation zone has become an important logistics channel to drive the economic and trade development of China, Laos and other Southeast Asian countries.

The travel time from one end of the rail line to the other is approximately 10 hours－well below the current road time of about 30 hours－and transportation costs between Vientiane and Kunming have been reduced by more than 30 percent, according to the Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council.

Du Yongzhi, who is in charge of the Mohan office of Haihan Logistics Co, which deals with imports and exports between China and Laos, spoke highly of the safe and efficient customs clearance mode established for the China-Laos Railway and the Mohan-Boten Economic Cooperation Zone.

"It helps cut the costs of our operation. As a result, we can sharpen our cutting edge in foreign trade," Du said.

The railway is expected to increase trade flow between China and Laos, from 1.2 million metric tons in 2016 to 3.7 million tons by 2030, including 2 million tons shifted from maritime to rail transportation, according to the World Bank.

Since the railway was launched, a total of 647,000 metric tons of international cargo has been imported and exported via the rail, according to Kunming Customs.

Goods delivered

Goods such as cattle feed, daily necessities and mechanical and electrical products from 21 Chinese provinces, autonomous regions and cities were transported via the China-Laos Railway to 10 Southeast Asian nations. Imported cargo included iron ore and charcoal from Southeast Asia, Kunming Customs said.

Xia Yingjiang of Yunnan Tianchi Logistics said that when the company previously sent chemical fertilizer to Southeast Asia, the goods had to go by train from Yunnan to the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, and from there continued the journey by sea to various destinations.

"It took a lot of time, and we spent a lot of money," Xia said. "Now, we go by the China-Laos Railway, which saves time and money."