A New Artery for Asia Plans for a direct rail
link between Moscow and Peking are, according to the Russian authorities, nearing com- pletion." I find it astonishing that this project should be no further advanced. The distance between the two capitals is some 3,000 miles, but only about six hundred miles of new line needs to be built in order to connect them by rail. The obvious route, which is almost certain to be followed, would be from the' railhead at Kalgan to Urga or Ulen Bator, now connected with the Trans-Siberian by a branch line run- ning south from Verkhne Udinsk. It is claimed that the new route will shorten the Moscow-Peking run from fourteen days to nine (this timing must refer, of course, only. to express trains). Russo-Chinese plans for the industrialisation of China are not much better than pipe-dreams until the U.S.S.R. can get into the country the capital equipment which China formerly imported by sea, and one would have expected urgent steps to be taken to double-bank the single railway link through Manchuria, which is complicated by a change of gauge where the Trans-Siberian joins the former Chinese Eastern Railway. It seems odd that a project of such funda- mental importance to the structure of Russo-Chinese relations should mature at such a sluggish pace.
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