China starts work on Laos railway, eyeing farther horizons

The first Southeast Asian rail project to grow out of China’s transcontinental vision for new economic links got underway on 2 December.

The president of Laos, Choummaly Sayasone, dug into a tidy pyramid of white sand at the groundbreaking ceremony in Vientiane for a roughly $6 billion segment of railroad that could eventually extend from the southern Chinese city of Kunming all the way to Singapore.

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