[Liaoyuan will welcome its first high-speed railway]On January 29, 2026, Jilin Province announced that the route and station location of the Liaoyuan section of the Changsi Liaotong high-speed railway have been determined. The project is designed with a speed of 350 kilometers per hour and a total length of approximately 334 kilometers, which will end the history of Liaoyuan not being connected to high-speed railways. The Provincial Development and Reform Commission stated that it is making every effort to promote the approval of pre feasibility studies and ensure their completion and opening to traffic by the end of the 15th Five Year Plan period. At that time, the travel time from Changchun to Liaoyuan will be shortened to about 45 minutes, and it will help Jilin achieve the goal of "connecting cities with high-speed rail".Editor/Gao Xue
On April 3, 2026, the domestically developed maximum diameter 13.2-meter hard rock TBM by CCCC Tianhe started construction in Changshu. The machine is equipped with 7600 domestically produced rare earth special steel main bearings developed by the Institute of Metals, Chinese Academy of Sciences, with a rated life of over 15000 hours and performance exceeding imports. This move marks China Communications Construction Corporation's first achievement of 100% localization of core components for ultra large diameter tunneling machines, completely bridging the last mile of national production of major underground engineering equipment in China.Editor/Cheng Liting
At the Export to China SCO Choice Forum, Kazakh companies signed a $125 million agricultural export agreement with Chinese partners. Changsha Kaliev, the Minister of Trade of Kazakhstan, led a delegation to visit Shandong to deepen industrial and logistics cooperation. As the largest trading partner, the bilateral trade volume between China and Kazakhstan is expected to increase from 41 billion US dollars in 2023 to 48.7 billion US dollars in 2025, with Shandong's trade volume reaching 2.2 billion US dollars. Both sides are shifting from scale expansion to quality and efficiency improvement, with a focus on promoting the export of high value-added, non resource, and green technology products to ensure supply chain stability.Editor/Cheng Liting