India has begun reconstructing the 1,000-mile Stilwell Road connecting it to China via Burma, more than six decades after the route was built to supply Chinese forces fighting Japanese occupation.

Work began on the Indian section last month and the whole road is scheduled to re-open by 2009, providing the fastest land route between India, Southeast Asia and China.

The road – named after Joseph Stilwell, the American general who supervised its construction – passes through some of Asia’s densest jungle and is one of the engineering feats of the Second World War.

Winston Churchill described the project, which took 15,000 US soldiers and 35,000 locals three years to build, as “an immense, laborious task, unlikely to be finished until the need for it has passed”.

He was almost right. Finished in 1945, it provided a life-line to Chinese nationalist forces for ten months, but fell into disrepair after the end of the war and was soon engulfed by jungle and mudslides.

India has long resisted pressure to reopen the route because of poor relations with China with whom it fought a border war in 1962, and separatist insurgencies in its northeastern states.

But after years of negotiations, the Indian Government has agreed to invest 450 million rupees (£5.4 million) in reconstructing its 38-mile section of the road. “We’ve initiated the process of redevelopment,” a Ministry of Road Transport official told The Times. “We expect the work to be completed by March 2009.”

The road follows what was once part of the southern Silk Route, carrying textiles, gemstones, spices, tea and ideas across Asia. Also known as the Ledo Road, it begins in India’s northeastern state of Assam and passes through 646 miles of Burma and 395 miles of southwestern China before reaching the Chinese city of Kunming.

Once completed it will allow people and goods to travel from Assam to Kunming in just two days, to Bangkok in four and to Singapore in six.

It will be the first large land route for goods traded between China and India, most of which go through the Malacca Straits – a journey of 3,700 miles (6,000 km) that takes more than a week.

China is so keen on the project that it has already converted its own stretch of the road into a six-lane highway, as well as helping Burma to rebuild much of its section. The Indian part, by contrast, is little more than a dirt track.

India’s decision to upgrade the track reflects a gradual improvement in its relations with China. Trade between the giant neighbours was just $3 billion (£1.5 billion) in 2000, but hit $13 billion in 2006. “The road will be a gateway for the whole country and will bring a lot of opportunities to the northeast,” M.K. Barooah, a spokesman for the Assam Government said.

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