{"id":179126,"date":"2014-11-14T04:23:44","date_gmt":"2014-11-14T12:23:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/?p=179126"},"modified":"2021-02-22T16:53:47","modified_gmt":"2021-02-23T00:53:47","slug":"chinas-new-silk-road-ambitions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/2014\/11\/chinas-new-silk-road-ambitions\/","title":{"rendered":"China’s New Silk Road Ambitions"},"content":{"rendered":"
This week\u2019s Economist examines Kazakhstan\u2019s part in building a new trans-Eurasian \u201cSilk Rail.\u201d<\/strong><\/a> Chinese president Xi Jinping has championed the expansion of roads, rails, and pipelines across central Asia in order to develop China\u2019s west, boost its regional influence, and ease its dependence on potentially vulnerable shipping lanes. But overland routes bring their own risks and entanglements:<\/p>\n Most containers still travel by sea, which is considerably cheaper\u2014about $4,000 each rather than $9,000. But the gap is narrowing as European manufacturers start filling the empty carriages going back to China with high-priced products such as luxury cars. Ronald Kleijwegt, who runs logistics in Asia for Hewlett-Packard, a big maker of information-technology hardware, says this year is the first when freight volumes going east have shown strong growth. The railway fits neatly into the vision of Xi Jinping, China\u2019s president, who has championed the New Silk Road as an alternative to American-controlled sea-lanes. On November 8th Mr Xi pledged $40 billion to \u201cbreak the connectivity bottleneck\u201d in Asia.<\/p>\n Success, however, depends also on Russia, China\u2019s rival for influence in Central Asia. It was a Russian-led project that helped streamline transport across Eurasia in the first place. In 2011 Kazakhstan, along with Russia and Belarus, formed a customs union, which is scheduled to become the Eurasian Union in January. Kazakh critics say the union is Vladimir Putin\u2019s attempt to rebuild the Soviet empire. Worryingly, Russia\u2019s erratic behaviour in Ukraine has coincided with a drop by a fifth in customs-union trade this year. [\u2026]<\/p>\n [\u2026 T]he common market has slashed the number has slashed the number of bribe-hungry customs agents between China and Europe (at the Kazakh-Russian and Russian-Belarusian borders). Mr Kleijwegt hails the customs union for dismantling these \u201cbottlenecks\u201d and knocking four to six days off the journey. On the other hand, he cautions that tensions between Russia and the West make the route vulnerable. Europeans are likely to find relying on Russia for their goods makes them uncomfortable. [Source<\/a><\/strong>]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Political stability is an even greater issue for similar projects in Afghanistan<\/a>. Beijing, therefore, is aiming for diversity. On Monday, Reuters\u2019 Brenda Goh reported on the announcement of China\u2019s new $40 billion investment in parallel land and sea routes<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n Details remain sketchy, but Xinhua said the plan would focus on China\u2019s Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road initiative, building roads, railways, ports and airports across Central and South Asia.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is China\u2019s wish to have an independent route,\u201d said Henrik Christensen, president of global logistics at KTZ Express, part of Kazakhstan Railways, which helped develop the Chongqing-Duisburg route.<\/p>\n \u201cThe cost of it is so mind-blowingly big and I would say that the only country in the world that could ever dream of this is China,\u201d he said. [Source<\/a><\/strong>]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n At Foreign Policy, Min Ye described the Silk Road strategy as China\u2019s answer to the U.S.\u2019 Trans-Pacific Partnership<\/strong><\/a>:<\/p>\n [\u2026] With the TPP, the United States emphasizes high standards in market liberalization and openness. China\u2019s Silk Road strategy has no \u201cstandards,\u201d except for a vague idea of mutual interest and mutual respect. The TPP seeks to reduce the roles of governments in market operations and to restrict the importance of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in the economies of its members. The Silk Road plan, in contrast, relies on top-level government coordination, and would enhance the power of large SOEs and governments. The TPP focuses on services, intellectual property rights, and domestic regulations. The Silk Road strategy aims to facilitate large-scale infrastructure construction, energy sale and transport, and relocation of manufacturing industries.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not only that the Silk Road plan is a better fit for China. Leading Chinese political thinkers also see the TPP as an enterprise with the potential to weaken China economically and politically \u2013 a strategy \u201cto contain China\u201d and to \u201cchange or overturn existing institutions in Asia-Pacific and the world,\u201d observed Chinese economics scholar Gu Guoda at Zhejiang University in a recent article in the party journal Probe. [\u2026] [Source<\/a><\/strong>]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Read more on HP\u2019s Silk Road ventures<\/a> in a 2013 feature by The New York Times\u2019 Keith Bradsher, via CDT. China is also involved in the opening but limited niche of Arctic cargo shipping<\/a>, and has been a persistent presence in rumors of future rivals to the Panama Canal, including a \u201cdry canal\u201d across Colombia<\/a> and a wet one across Nicaragua<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This week\u2019s Economist examines Kazakhstan\u2019s part in building a new trans-Eurasian \u201cSilk Rail.\u201d Chinese president Xi Jinping has championed the expansion of roads, rails, and pipelines across central Asia in order to develop China\u2019s west, boost its regional influence, and ease its dependence on potentially vulnerable shipping lanes. But overland routes bring their own risks […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":962,"featured_media":179128,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[116,2,14744,14745,14746,100,5],"tags":[5872,588,17613,1603,625,17502,843,1812,6359,1234,7382,142,14941,6379],"class_list":["post-179126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world","category-economy","category-level-2-article","category-level-3-article","category-level-4-article","category-politics","category-society","tag-afghanistan","tag-apec","tag-belt-and-road-initiative","tag-central-asia","tag-exports","tag-global-influence","tag-middle-east","tag-shipping","tag-silk-road","tag-silk-road-project","tag-taliban","tag-trade","tag-trans-pacific-partnership","tag-united-states","et-has-post-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"yoast_head":"\n