A Chinese-funded Finnish company FinEst Bay Area Development, working on a Tallinn-Helsinki undersea tunnel project (FinEst Link) has announced it will work with three Chinese companies on the final design and building of the 100 kilometer tunnel.

FinEst Bay Area Development in Finland and Estonia have signed a memorandum of understanding with China Railway International Group, China Railway Engineering Company, China Communications Construction Company, and financier Touchstone Capital Partners to build Tallinn-Helsinki tunnel.

The tunnel project involves the development of an undersea 100 km long rail tunnel link between Helsinki and Tallinn. The new tunnel will also connect Helsinki to Rail Baltica, a new standard-gauge line that links Tallinn, Riga, Kaunas, Warsaw, and Berlin. It would form part of the North Sea-Baltic Corridor, which connects the ports of the Eastern shore of the Baltic Sea with the ports of the North Sea. The tunnel will also be part of Beijing’s Belt and Road initiative.

Beijing’s Belt and Road initiative's objective is to link China by sea and land with Southeast and Central Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and Africa, through a network along the lines of the old Silk Road as well as through an Arctic route.

Finland and Estonia have very limited resources in tunnel boring and high-speed train technologies, thus new partners were needed to build the project. China’s Touchstone Capital Partners has already provided provisional funding of EUR 15 billion (US$ 16.7 billion) for the tunnel project, out of which almost EUR 12.5 billion (US$ 13.90 billion) will be spent on the construction cost of the project.

The tunnel will connect the capitals of Finland and Estonia, which are divided by the Gulf of Finland. The tunnel will cut the travel time to 20 minutes from 2-hour ferry ride, a trip taken daily by thousands of people. The feasibility study published in 2017 stated that the tunnel could be completed by 2040, but the new builders are expecting to complete the project by 2024.

The project has not yet received the backing from the two governments.