Chinese official pitches for Kunming-Kolkata bullet train service

Kolkata, Sep 12 (IANS) Chinese Consul General in Kolkata, Ma Zhanwu, on Wednesday suggested a bullet train service between Kunming and Kolkata through Myanmar and Bangladesh.

"If the project becomes a reality, it will take only two hours to complete 2,000-km journey, compared with flights that take almost two hours and 30 minutes," Ma said at a conference here.

"Most talked about is the bullet train from Kunming to Kolkata and from Kolkata to Kunming. Maybe in the coming decade, it will just take two hours from Kolkata via Dhaka and Myanmar to Kunming," he said.

He said the service will give a thrust to trade and commerce in the Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar (BCIM) corridor.

Ma said the project figured in the Greater Mekong Subregion meet in Kunming in 2015.

The envoy said that Chinese policies like the Belt and Road Initiative is mainly designed for extensive discussion and shared benefits with neighbouring countries like India and "not to conquer them".