China Is Seriously Considering A High-Speed Railway Connecting It To The U.S.

China already has the world's longest high-speed rail network but it's still very ambitious about growing it.

A railway expert at the Chinese Academy of Engineering told the Beijing Times that officials are discussing a project that includes a railway connecting China to the U.S. with a bullet train, according Quartz.

There are already an existing 10,000 km (6,000 miles) of high-speed railways in China and the country plans on nearly doubling that before 2015. By 2020 it plans to have 25,000 km. 

Another project reportedly under serious consideration is a tunnel connecting mainland China to Taiwan. If it becomes a reality, the tunnel would be 1776 km long - twice the length of the Chunnel Tunnel connecting France and Britain.

Considering all of the above, the 13,000 km railway that would traverse Russia, cross under the Bering straight (200 km of water) then into North America, doesn't sound outlandish. However, taking a look at what what the country is spending on railway projects, a track connecting China to the U.S. would be astronomically expensive.

"A railway from China to the US might bring the two countries closer, at least geographically, but it would be an absurd project. China is already spending an estimated $32 billion on an underwater tunnel that measures just 123 km long. And officials estimate that 1,776 km of railway being built from Lanzhou in the western province of Gansu to Xinjiang will cost about $24 billion, which is cheap compared to China's previous high-speed rail projects," Lily Kuo at Quartz wrote.

Still, if those are any indication of what a "China-Russia-Canada-America" would cost then it would come in north of $200 billion.

China has a high-speed rail budget of $300 billion so that single railway would put a major dent in that. 

"China may be one of the best examples of countries that love mega-infrastructure projects, but even this may be too much," Kuo wrote.