The meandering and rugged border between Laos and China has been secluded and quiet for centuries. But recently, the sense of calm has given way to the rumble of bulldozers and construction workers, who are putting the finishing touches to an ambitious highway that will eventually connect Singapore to Hong Kong.
Buried in thick jungle and dangerous mountain ranges, the Greater Mekong Sub-region (GMS) - comprising Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Myanmar, northern Thailand and China's Yunnan province - has traditionally represented Asia's backwaters, with the only roads being historic routes used by traders and adventurers.
This is set to change. In 1999, China and the Asean nations agreed to build an 1,800km highway from Kunming in Yunnan to Bangkok. The project, scheduled to be completed by the end of this year, would realise motorists' century-old dream of driving from Singapore to Hong Kong, and any mainland city.
Impressive as it is, the Kunming-Bangkok highway is just one of the many transportation links planned between China and its neighbours in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean). On August 28, the two sides jointly outlined funding details to launch a Pan-Asia railway linking Kunming to Singapore by train. The railway will be 7,000km long and run through seven Asean countries, China News Service reported.
China and Asean will invest more than US$10 billion in the project to upgrade and standardise existing railways and build 550km of new tracks to link them. The project is expected to be completed by 2015, the news agency said.
Beijing has set aside billions of dollars to develop even more transportation links with the Asean nations. In the Guangxi autonomous region alone, more than 100 billion yuan will be spent in the next five years to upgrade and build 2,500km of railways to speed up the flow of goods and people within the GMS region. Earlier this year, Guangxi agreed with Vietnam to build two super-highways which will reduce the travelling time from its capital, Nanning, to Hanoi to less than four hours.