China is in the middle of a 480 billion pound domestic railway expansion project that aims to build nearly 19,000 miles of new railways in the next five years, connecting up all of its major cities with high-speed lines.
The world's fastest train, the Harmony Express which has a top speed of nearly 250mph, was unveiled at the end of last year, between the cities of Wuhan and Guangzhou. Wholly Chinese-built, but using technology from Siemens and Kawasaki, the Harmony Express can cover 660 miles, the equivalent of a journey from London to Edinburgh and back, in just three hours.
Mr Wang said the route of the three lines had yet to be decided, but that construction for the South East Asian line had already begun in the southern province of Yunnan and that Burma was about to begin building its link. China has offered to bankroll the Burmese line in exchange for the country's rich reserves of lithium, a metal widely used in batteries.
Currently, the only rail line that links China to South East Asia is an antiquated track built by the French in Vietnam a century ago. The Asian Development Bank has recently agreed a second 27 million pound loan as part of the 93 pound reconstruction of Cambodia's network, which should finish by 2013. The cost of the lines from Cambodia to Singapore and then from Vietnam to China could be roughly 400 million pound.
"We have also already carried out the prospecting and survey work for the European network, and Central and Eastern European countries are keen for us to start," Mr Wang said. "The Northern network will be the third one to start, although China and Russia have already agreed on a high-speed line across Siberia, where one million Chinese already live."
One stumbling block is China's desire for the high-speed tracks to run on the same gauge as China's domestic network. Vietnam has agreed to change its standard gauge, but other countries are still in negotiations.
"From our point of view, the biggest issue is money," said Mr Wang. "We will use government money and bank loans, but the railways may also raise financing from the private sector and also from the host countries. We would actually prefer the other countries to pay in natural resources rather than make their own capital investment."
As for passengers, Mr Wang predicted that in a decade's time, visa restrictions on travel through Asia "will be further lifted".
So China would like to be paid in natural resources, Talk about playing the long game.
The Burmese have just signed over the rights to there country's rich reserves of lithium in exchange for the Chinese building that section of the rail link.
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www.seat61.comYou can already get from London to Beijing by train via Moscow but it takes considerably longer than 2 days
