China is considering building a high-speed railway line to the US, Beijing Times reported on Thursday.

The proposed line would begin in north-east China and run up through Siberia and through a tunnel underneath the Bering Strait through Alaska and Canada to reach the continental US, according to Wang Mengshu, a railway expert and academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering.

Crossing the Bering Strait between Russia and Alaska would require about 200km (125 miles) of undersea tunnel, says Wang.
"Right now we're in discussions. Russia has already been thinking about this for many years," Wang said.

The project would run for 13,000km, about 3,000km further than the Trans-Siberian Railway. The entire trip would take two days, with the train travelling at an average of 350km/h (220mph).

The tunnel technology is "already in place" and will be used to build a high-speed railway between the south-east province of Fujian and Taiwan. "The project will be funded and constructed by China," Wang said. "The details of this project are yet to be finalized."

This China-US line is expected to be one of four international high-speed rail projects currently in the works.

The first is a line that would run from London via Paris, Berlin, Warsaw, and Kiev to Moscow, where it would split into two routes, one of which would run to China through Kazakhstan and the other through eastern Siberia.

The second line would begin in the far-western Chinese city of Urumqi and then run through Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Iran and Turkey to Germany.

The third would begin in the south-western city of Kunming and end in Singapore. The routes are at various stages of planning and development.

The article is edited and translated from《中国人有望乘高铁赴美：1.3万公里两天到达》, source: Beijing Times, author: Han Xu.