VIENTIANE/BEIJING -- The first Southeast Asian rail project to grow out of China's transcontinental vision for new economic links got underway Wednesday.
The president of Laos, Choummaly Sayasone, dug into a tidy pyramid of white sand at the groundbreaking ceremony in Vientiane for a roughly $6 billion segment of railroad that could eventually extend from the southern Chinese city of Kunming all the way to Singapore.
