To promote Sino-Indian trade, China has begun to renovate the historic Stilwell Road which was built during World War II, connecting Yunnan Province in Southwest China to Myanmar and India.

Early surveys have been made and a detailed renovation plan is expected to be finalized by the end of this month, sources with the Yunnan provincial government were quoted as saying yesterday by Xinhua.

After the reopening of the renovated road, the distance from Baoshan, a border city in Yunnan, via Myitkyina in Myanmar, to Ledo in India will be a touch above 500 kilometers.

And the distance between Kunming, capital of Yunnan, and Ledo, a railway hub in northeastern India, will be 1,220 kilometers.

At present, trade between Yunnan and India has to follow a convoluted route from Kunming to Zhanjiang port in Guangdong Province then to be loaded onto ships bound for the Malacca Straits and India - a total of 6,000 kilometers.

Stilwell Road, built to outflank the marauding Japanese and establish a land supply route to China, connected China, Myanmar and India.

Starting in Ledo, the road was originally called "Ledo Road" and was later renamed after US General Joseph Stilwell (1883-1946), chief of Staff of the Allied Forces.

The road was constructed under the direct supervision of General Stilwell in 1942, connecting some sections of the old "Burma Road," stretching from Kunming.

Some 60 kilometers of the Stilwell Road lie in India, 1,000 kilometers in Myanmar and more than 600 kilometers in China.

However, parts of the road have virtually disappeared due to a lack of maintenance.

It has been reported that the Indian Government is also looking to reopen the route as an international highway linking the country to Myanmar and China.

India and China have emerged as two of the world's largest economies and have quickly expanded bilateral economic relations in recent years.

Trade between India and China has galloped from a few hundred million US dollars in the late 1990s, to US$13.6 billion last year.

China has become India's second largest trading partner.

(China Daily April 13, 2005)