Landlocked to land link

The railway — part of the Belt and Road Initiative proposed by China in 2013 — has alleviated landlocked Laos' transport challenges, unlocking its potential as a transit hub for the region and beyond.

Spanning 1,035 kilometers connecting Vientiane to Kunming, capital of Southwest China's Yunnan province, the China-Laos Railway is integrating into the major trans-Asian railway, enabling trains to carry freight from Southeast Asia to China and onward to Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus and Poland, before reaching Duisburg in Germany. It takes just 14 to 21 days from Southeast Asia to Europe by rail, compared to 45 days by sea.

"The railway has become an important trade gateway between China and ASEAN," Saleumsak Sayamoungkhoun from the Lao Ministry of Public Works and Transport told Chinese and Southeast Asian journalists during their recent eight-day 2024 ASEAN Media China-Laos Railway Tour, which involved a journey from Vientiane to Kunming.

While waiting for the standard-gauge China-Laos Railway to link up with the tracks of Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore to form a broader Pan-Asian network linking Kunming to Singapore, the region has already been benefiting from the current network, which converges the standard and one-meter gauges.

ASEAN Express — a freight train system linking Malaysia to Thailand, Laos and Southwest China's Chongqing — recently completed its first round trip. Carrying 20 wagons loaded with containers, the freight train departed Selangor in Malaysia on June 27, passing through Thai capital Bangkok before crossing the Mekong River and entering Laos.

At the Thanaleng Dry Port, Laos' integrated logistics center in Vientiane, containers were off-loaded from the train on the one-meter gauge Laos-Thailand railway onto a train on the 1.435 meter-gauge China-Laos Railway running northward to Chongqing, taking nine days for a one-way journey compared to 14 to 21 days by sea, resulting in cost savings of about 20 percent.

With the closer links, many entrepreneurs in Thailand, Laos and China said they are looking to ride the wave of regional integration.