Japan may be famous for its bullet trains, but if China's plans for a high-speed railway go forward, people could be zipping over from London to Beijing in under two days.

The train would go on from Beijing to Singapore, and also connect to India and Pakistan, opening up the East to non-fliers.

One of the senior consultants on the railway project, and also a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, Wang Mengshu, said that they are "aiming for the trains to run almost as fast as aeroplanes," and that with any luck, the railway should be "completed in a decade."

In addition to the London to Beijing plan, they're also hoping to build railways from Beijing to Russia and Germany, connected with the European railway system. A third project that goes south from China, to Vietnam, Thailand, Burma and Malaysia has already started, with a deal struck between Burma and China that will see the Chinese paying for the Burmese line, with the Chinese able to tap into their lithium reserves—which they can then use in production of batteries. [Telegraph]

Image credit: Occam