China hopes to revive the Silk Road with bullet trains to Xinjiang

   High-speed rail link from Lanzhou to Urumqi will also help Beijing
   impose its will over the restive Muslim-majority region

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   The bullet train slices past the edge of the Gobi desert, through
   gale-swept grasslands and past snowy peaks, a high-altitude, high-speed
   and hi-tech manifestation of China’s re-imagined Silk Road meant to
   draw the country’s restive west ever tighter into Beijing’s embrace.
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   reserves of oil and natural gas.

   The $23bn, high-speed train link, which is still being tested in winds
   that can sometimes reach up to 215 km/h, is just one symbol of that
   broader determination to cement China’s control over its
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   The train will run from Lanzhou to Xinjiang’s capital, Urumqi; for the
   longer-term, China is even talking about extending the high-speed
   network through Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Iran
   and Turkey to Bulgaria.

   “The high-speed railway will build the foundation for the Silk Road
   economic belt,” Erkin Tuniyaz, vice-chairman of the regional
   government, told reporters after a recent media trip on the train.
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   would revitalise ancient trading posts such as Kashgar and Hotan. Plans
   to establish textiles factories hold out the promise of jobs, while the
   eventual extension of the high-speed train on a new route to the south
   is supposed to promote what the Communist party calls a more “modern”
   way of thinking.
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   Yet, as two Uighur scholars in Urumqi studied a map showing a new line
   for a high-speed passenger train, and the old railway line soon to be
   largely devoted to freight traffic, they could not escape a wry
   conclusion. “The resources from Xinjiang are going one way, and people