On November 13, a single Chinese ship bound for Africa left the newly-operational port of Gwadar in Balochistan, Pakistan. Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, presiding over the inauguration of the facility, described the event as a “watershed” moment. It was the final leg of a journey that started several weeks earlier, when a convoy of Chinese trucks carrying the goods crossed the border into Gilgit-Balistan, 2600 kilometers north. Prime Minister Sharif gave assurances that the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), of which Gwadar is the crown jewel, would materialize on schedule.
Nov 21, 2016
Asia’s economic growth has fueled a boom in infrastructure investment across the region. China has taken a lead role with its newly launched Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and its Belt and Road Initiative — also known as “One Belt, One Road” — which aims to improve connectivity and cooperation between China and the rest of Eurasia.
Nov 18, 2016
In October, CSIS launched its Reconnecting Asia project, which seeks to track the various initiatives by China, Russia, Japan, South Korea, and other growing Asian powers to reconnect Asia and Europe via old trade routes. These modern-day Silk Roads will use highways, railroads, ports, bridges, and pipelines to reduce the travel time between the two continents. The best known of these initiatives is China’s “One Belt, One Road” in Central Asia. This is an ambitious undertaking across 43 countries that encompasses 69 percent of the global population and 60 percent of global gross domestic product (GDP). The efforts to reconnect Asia with Europe will be one of the biggest forces shaping the next 30 years, bringing new markets, people, and resources into the fabric of the global geopolitical landscape. If successful, it will revolutionize logistics and create trillions of dollars in economic value through increased trade and economic activity.
Nov 17, 2016
Like its predecessors, China’s efforts at unifying Eurasia are driven by several factors: a desire to boost trade, a need to find new markets for firms struggling with overcapacity at home, and a desire to set the rules of the new Silk Road.
Nov 16, 2016
The economic dynamism of early European nation-states solidified naval transportation as the foundation of global commerce, giving rise to the great cities of Asia located on coastlines and along key waterways. Today, this 400-year epoch of Asian geopolitics focused on the littoral is changing. The great Eurasian supercontinent is reconnecting internally.
Nov 15, 2016