A dataset of China’s overseas railway projects from 2007 to 2019

With the advance of China’s railway construction technology and the expansion of the overseas market, there is rapid growth in major overseas railway interconnection projects undertaken by China. Especially, since the Belt and Road Initiative was launched, China’s major railway interconnection projects under construction have grown rapidly, but until now there has been no centralized database on all the railway project information. This dataset of China’s overseas railway projects from 2007 to 2019 has been compiled with the help of the web crawler technology as well as the reference of China’s proposed project network, the project database of the Ministry of Commerce, the website of the Economic and Commercial Counsellor’s Office of the relevant national embassy, the relevant public number of the “Belt and Road”, and the official website of the Overseas Railway Project Construction Enterprise. The dataset collected a total of 86 overseas railway projects that have been constructed by China’s enterprises since 2007, covering the countries along the “Belt and Road” and other countries and regions in the world. Each project includes the railway project name, based country, continent, region, country category, railway type, construction enterprise, railway line length (km), design speed (km/h), estimated signing/starting time, estimated completion time(duration), project amount, and cooperation method (investment, construction/design, acquisition). This dataset can benefit the relevant departments of China to better acquire information on overseas railway projects and provide support for decision-makers in promoting cooperation between relevant countries in the field of interconnected railways.