The Beijing government announced that work was underway on this rail project in a post on the social media platform Weibo (considered the Chinese equivalent of Twitter).
Cooperation between China and Russia on high-speed rail was on the agenda of the meeting Li held with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev.
Silk Road
At that meeting, the Chinese prime minister said that China was ready to establish a Eurasian high-speed rail corridor linking Beijing and Moscow.
This route would be a key component of the so-called new maritime and land-based «Silk Road,» a project through which Beijing hopes to strengthen trade routes with Central and South Asia.
Relations between China and Russia are currently strong, as evidenced by the signing last May of a historic agreement for the export of Russian gas to China—at a time when Moscow was facing one of its greatest periods of international isolation due to the Ukraine crisis, which was then at its height.
