Is China Really Planning To Build An Underwater Super Train To The USA?

According to a report in the Beijing Times, citing an expert at the Chinese Academy of Engineering, Chinese officials are considering a route that would start in the country's northeast, thread through eastern Siberia and cross the Bering Strait via a 125-mile long underwater tunnel into Alaska.

"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.

The route would begin in China's northeast and extend through Siberia and across the Bering Straight into Alaska, according to an expert at the Chinese Academy of Engineering, Wang Mengshu. It would be almost 3000 km longer than the massive Trans-Siberian railroad.

The tunnel that the Chinese would help bore beneath the icy seas would be four times the length of what traverses the English Channel. That's reason enough to be skeptical of the project, of which there are few details beyond what was attributed to the one official cited by the state-run Beijing Times.

The train would reportedly travel at around 220mph, meaning the entire trip between the United States and China would take around two days. What is being called the China-Russia-Canada-America line is one of four large-scale international high-speed rail projects the country wants to build, the Guardian writes, citing the Beijing Times:

The first is a line that would run from London via Paris, Berlin, Warsaw, Kiev and Moscow, where it would split into two routes, one of which would run to China through Kazakhstan and the other through eastern Siberia. The second line would begin in the far-western Chinese city of Urumqi and then run through Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Iran and Turkey to Germany. The third would begin in the south-western city of Kunming and end in Singapore.

theguardian.com

It has signaled its intent to build a "New Silk Road" -- a heavy-duty freight network through Central Asia that would connect with Europe via rail rather than the old caravans that once bridged West and East.

To that end, Beijing has assiduously resurrected the narrative of the ancient Silk Road as well as given prime billing to the tales of China's famed Ming dynasty treasure fleets, which sailed all across the Indian Ocean. Seen in such grand historic perspective, a tunnel to Alaska doesn't seem too far-fetched.

While some of its neighbors watch China's rise warily, the main plank of Beijing's soft power pitch has always been its stated desire to improve economic ties and trade with virtually everyone.

"China’s wisdom for building an open world economy and open international relations is being drawn on more and more each day," trumpets the Xinhua report that accompanies the map above, according to the Diplomat.

thediplomat.com

But while the technology exists to make the train a reality, the political environment is less welcoming to the prospects of a cross-Bering route. Large-scale American infrastructure investments — in trains in particular — aren't in vogue right now.

The feds have struggled to keep Amtrak adequately funded and botched the modest Acela project. And it would likely cost a whole lot of money. A Baltimore-D.C. maglev rail line alone would cost well more than $8 billion dollars. Conservative groups like the Heritage Foundation often point to high-speed rail projects as expensive boondoggles that waste public funds.