Li Qiang says China will consider making Malaysia’s ECRL central piece of pan-Asia railway

Chinese Premier Li Qiang on Wednesday said his country is open to working with Malaysia to turn its East Coast Rail Link project into a key segment of China’s grand goal of building a pan-Asia railway system that would extend overland connectivity between China and much of Southeast Asia.

Beijing has long pursued plans to establish a direct rail link that would connect the city of Kunming in China’s Yunnan province to Singapore through an expansive rail network running through Laos, Thailand and Malaysia – with offshoots into Vietnam and Cambodia.

Li, who is on his first official visit to Malaysia, said the East Coast Rail Link (ECRL) could be the final piece in their connectivity puzzle.

“Malaysia is located in the centre of Southeast Asia and has a unique location advantage,” Li said in his speech at an event in capital city Kuala Lumpur, where he and Malaysia’s Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim jointly launched construction of an integrated passenger terminal for the ECRL.

The ECRL launched to great fanfare in 2017 as a flagship project of China’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in Malaysia. It was billed as a replacement for a colonial-era train system, upgrading it to an electrified rail line that promises to halve the travel time for freight and passengers to and from capital city Kuala Lumpur.