In 1997, China's mainline railways network carried 1.62 billion tonnes of freight. Although the passenger business is losing market-share to buses and planes, China's railway freight business is booming. The southern route will also bring east and central Asia logistically closer by rail to gateway ocean ports on the Black Sea, the Mediterranean and the Arabian Gulf. Vietnam, so far, is the only southeast Asian country to have rail links with China, one metre-gauge, one standard gauge. A railway to link Thailand, via Laos, with Yunnan, China's southernmost province, has been on the drawing board for some years, however.
China also proposes to build a rail link to Tibet.
Both Laos and Tibet, so far, have yet to attract any railway development at all. In southeast Asia today, only Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand exchange rail traffic, and Vietnam recently reopened its metre-gauge line to Yunnan. First priority, however, is to give central Asia efficient freight connections to China and Europe. Long only a dream, China's railway Silk Road is now on the fast track to reality.