China’s ‘Silk Road’ plan gets wheels
CHINA’S Silk Road summit on Sunday will highlight the country’s plans to revive ancient trade routes from Asia to Europe and Africa with a massive network of rail and maritime links.
The One Belt, One Road Initiative was unveiled by President Xi Jinping in 2013.
Xi will host top officials from 28 nations for the twoday conference on the outskirts of Beijing, though few Western leaders will attend the meeting.
Beijing’s grand vision includes the “Silk Road Economic Belt”, which extends from China to Central Asia through Europe, linking northern Xi’an city with Dushanbe in Tajikistan, Moscow, Rotterdam in the Netherlands, and Venice in Italy.
The “21-century Maritime Silk Road” is a maritime transport route that plans to connect China’s east coast with Europe via the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean.
The initiative spans some 65 countries representing 60% of the global population and about a third of global GDP.
Among the planned projects is the China-Europe Railway Express, which in- cludes 51 rail links connecting 27 Chinese and 28 European cities, with freight trains that offer shorter travel time than sea routes.
A planned 418km rail line between the Asian giant and Laos attempts to be the first overseas route that connects with the vast rail system in China. Once finished, it will register as the longest and fastest in the southeastern Asian country.
Another 873km highspeed railway project between China and Thailand will link the Chinese border to Thailand’s ports.
It will transform southwestern Yunnan province into a trading hub that exports China’s goods to southeast Asian markets.
In Africa, the initiative will include a 471km railway between Nairobi and Mombasa on the Indian Ocean coast. Passenger trains will zoom at 120km/h, while freights will run at 80km/h and carry 25 million tons of cargo a year.
Three state-owned Chinese enterprises bought Turkey’s third-largest port, Kumport, which is considered an important joint between the “belt” and the “road”.
In Pakistan, a trade route was inaugurated in November to link southwestern Gwadar port, on the Arabian Sea, with Kashgar, a city in China’s northwestern Xinjiang province.
China and Malaysia are building an industrial park in Kuantan, Malaysia, for steel, aluminium deep processing and palm oil processing.
In eastern Europe, a China-Belarus industrial park for high-tech businesses broke ground in Minsk in July 2014, the largest one built by the Asian country overseas. – AFP