A new Silk Road promises the countries of Central Asia the Chinese investments and growth of China’s political influence

Almaty. October 27. Silkroadnews – The goal of the Chinese project “One Belt, One Road” (Silk Road) is to create the integrated Eurasian economic space with political center in China, the expert of the Institute for the German Economy (the IW) Thomas Puls believes.

“The initiative has quite many objectives, though the major one is not so much a corridor for land delivery of Chinese goods to Europe, but a creation of an integrated Eurasian economic space, with China serving as a political center. The idea is to use the transport sector, meaning the economy, to get closely tied to China those states that are located along the corridor. For example, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan”, T. Puls told Deutsche Welle.

With this he did not exclude that “in the distant future the project could even bypass Russia”.

“The question is about building the transport pipeline to Europe through Central Asian countries, Iran and Turkey. The classic Silk Road also passed to the south of the Caspian Sea (...) In general the land route (China-Russia-Europe rail route) is rather a pleasant side effect of the project allowing to speed up the delivery of a specific product mix. Yet, the overwhelming majority of its products China will supply to Europe by sea”, the expert said.

According to him,  it will take up to 300 railroad trains to replace one single modern container ship.
“None of the lines will provide such a capacity. Therefore, the Marine Silk Road development is an important part of the initiative”, T. Puls noted.

He explained that the rail route is designed “to enhance cooperation with not very large neighboring countries, develop new markets and increase political influence in the region”.

““One belt” concept provides for creation of the industrial zones in the countries through which the transport lines to go. The Chinese firms will invest and build there. On the one hand, it will help to employ the Chinese construction industry suffering due to overcapacity for the recent years. On the other hand, the intensification of trade with Central Asian and other countries of the region is designed to give a powerful impetus to the development of the North-West of China”, T. Puls added.

To summarize the expert has noted that the “big projects are still on the way” in the southern direction and direction toward Central Asia.