What comes to mind when you think of Laos?
The China-Laos Railway Project, which was officially launched on December 25, 2016, was officially opened to traffic on December 3, 2021, with a total length of 1035 kilometers, all of which adopt Chinese management standards and technical standards for construction, and are international railways directly connected to China's railway network, since then, Laos has begun to change from the most depressed "landlock country" in Southeast Asia to an open and wealthy "land union country", in this land of Chamba flowers, "Lancang" will run all the way to the Chinese railway network and help Laos to sail internationally.
Laos is one of the least developed countries in the world, in Southeast Asia, which is surrounded by the sea on three sides, Laos is surrounded by China, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia in middle age, although surrounded by the sea on three sides, but Laos does not even have a sea outlet, you say this is not the most humiliating? Well, let's take a look at the status of Laos in the hearts of the people, Laos often appears in the novels and movies of various countries, but the roles that appear are basically not good roles, for example, in the hearts of the people, mentioning Laos will think of the Mekong River, and when it comes to the Mekong River, many people will unconsciously think of the Golden Triangle, but in fact, Laos still has a lot of good things, such as Ganoderma lucidum, bird's nest, such as ore, etc., the reason why it is not well known to us is because Laos is mountainous and lack of roads, traffic is extremely underdeveloped, there are data showing, By 2010, the entire country's railway mileage was 3.5 kilometers, and yes, many people in the north, Shanghai and Guangzhou had far more than the distance to work and take the subway. Therefore, before the China-Laos railway, Laos called itself a "land lock country".
Many people can't help but wonder, the slogan "If you want to be rich, first build roads" is familiar to us, don't the Lao people know?
Of course, people also know that it costs money to build roads, and it is too difficult to build roads in Laos.
In Laos, the average annual temperature is about 26 °C, and the rainfall is abundant, but 80% of the 236,800 square kilometers of land are mountains and plateaus, and "the terrain is high in the north and low in the south, and the national forest coverage rate is as high as 50%." With Laos' financial resources, it is impossible to afford to build a road to the outside world under such conditions.
But again, the saying goes: If you want to be rich, build roads first. Only by building roads can they let their specialties go abroad, promote economic growth, and thus get rid of the poverty fate of the landlock country, but "a penny is difficult to defeat the hero", Laos itself is obviously unable to build this road to the world, so their eyes are focused on the neighbor China. In the end, the two countries agreed to jointly build this railway towards prosperity in the form of a joint venture!
But when paving this road, the situation is far more complicated than imagined, the 1035-kilometer-long China-Laos Railway is located in the southern extension of the Hengduan Mountain Range, the railway line has to cross the three mountains, across the four waters, the mountains are high and deep, the relative height difference between the highest point and the lowest point is 2900 meters, and the terrain conditions are extremely complex. The bridge-tunnel ratio of the whole line is as high as 71.1%, and the total length of the bridge and tunnel is 712 kilometers, of which the total length of the tunnel is 609 kilometers. Therefore, when the China-Laos Railway was opened to traffic, everyone sighed that the China-Laos Railway was not paved, but dug out and erected!
Do you think that just digging caves and building bridges will solve the problem? When building the China-Laos railway, a lot of shells that did not explode were also found, and it was not curious why there were so many shells in Laos, which was so poor! This has to mention the Vietnam War, when the beautiful country fought with its own big waist, it wanted to invade Vietnam, and even wanted to crush the Vietnamese army with weapons and equipment, so the beautiful country in order to play the advantages of weapons and equipment, crazy with aircraft bombs, and during this period, as a neighbor of Vietnam, Laos also passively received a lot of "air courier", according to statistics, during the Vietnam War, the beautiful country "mistakenly dropped" more than 2 million tons of shells to Laos! People who know the history of World War II know that during the bombing of London, the German shells dropped on Britain were only 70,000 tons, which had already caused about 60,000 deaths and more than a million people were homeless! The 2 million tons of artillery shells, on average, in this 230,000 square kilometers of land, are enough to turn the entire country over several times, but the voice that once spoke in the hands of the Western media, most people do not know these things, but even if the war has ended for decades, Laos now has innocent people being injured every year. This also brought many inconveniences to the construction of the railway, and Laos and China had to plan and unite to build this China-Laos railway, which symbolizes friendship, while venting explosions.
On December 3, 2021, the China-Laos Railway was completed and opened to traffic from Kunming, Yunnan, China, to Vientiane, Laos.
In the past, the transportation of materials from China to Laos took more than 20 days, but now the fastest from Kunming to Mohan can be reached in 5 hours and 20 minutes, and the fastest from Moding to Vientiane can be reached in 3 hours and 20 minutes. Coupled with the customs clearance time at the port, the transportation time from Kunming to Vientiane is shortened to about 10 hours at the earliest, and the freight rate is also greatly reduced.
China-Laos Railway is the largest investment project in the history of China and Laos, at the same time, it is also the world's first cross-border railway to carry out systematic green landscape design on all lines, and it is also the first long trunk railway project in Asia that integrates ecological environmental protection, landscape beautification and humanistic customs, and the allocation rate of power-saving equipment and facilities in the China-Laos Railway Station has reached more than 80%, and the allocation rate of water-saving equipment and facilities has reached 100%, basically completing the construction of "one station and one scene" boutique station.
At the same time, the China-Laos Railway is also a road of science and technology, all the equipment along the line is independently developed by the mainland, from special bridges to the precision paving of ultra-long railcars, to the "Lancang" all use the "Fuxing" train technology, as well as the full line of China's railway train control system, all of which reflect the wisdom and strength of China's unremitting struggle to promote the community of human destiny, and have accumulated valuable experience for the construction of railways in the highland mountains of China and even the world, so that the business philosophy, successful experience and technical standards of China's railways have gone international.
The "Lancang" that runs through the land of Jamba flowers will surely run all the way through the Chinese railway network and lead Laos to the world!