A milestone agreement on trade and economic cooperation signed in May 2018 represents an important step forward for the relationship between the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) and China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
Although Beijing insists that its Belt and Road Initiative has no geopolitical motives, the project has been at the center of an increasing number of political controversies, foreign and domestic, writes the Financial Times in a Special Report, citing analyses from the Reconnecting Asia Project.
The volume of EU-China cargo traffic traveling the Eurasian Economic Union’s (EAEU) railways is growing rapidly, a trend that is likely to continue in the short term. However, according to a new report by the Eurasian Development Bank’s Centre for Integration Studies, the EAEU and its neighboring countries will need to further expand transport infrastructure and remove a number of barriers to keep the momentum going.
Since China announced its ambitious Belt and Road Initiative in 2013, South Korea has actively pursued international initiatives that are independent of Chinese goals and priorities. In particular, the Moon administration’s two-pronged infrastructure vision, dubbed the “New Northern” and “New Southern” Policies, offers insights into how midsize powers in Asia might navigate growing geopolitical uncertainty in the region.
To better understand the opportunities and challenges posed along China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the members of The New Silk Road Project will travel 10,000 miles across China’s Economic Belt to explore the people, projects, countries, and landscapes involved. We expect to depart from London and Rotterdam, two western termini of the Belt and Road, in June 2018. Over 60 days, we will travel to Yiwu, a city in East China that houses the world’s largest wholesale market and aspires to send more of its goods along the BRI’s overland routes. We will focus on two key corridors: the New Eurasian Land Bridge and China-Central Asia-West Asia Economic Corridor, attempting to visit over two dozen ‘Silk Road’ hubs along this fast-evolving axis.