Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) and Global South strategic cooperation

That is a different rail link. There is one along the northern border with Pakistan, which did open, and there was another one which was supposed to go around the coastal area I think. That project has stalled.


"Pakistan and Iran inaugurated a second official border crossing ... at the strategically located crossing point of Gwadar-Ramdhan. Situated in Iran’s southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchistan, which lies adjacent to Pakistan’s Baluchistan province, this new gateway is now the shortest land route connecting the port of Gwadar to Iran.
...
At last, the southern parts of Iran and Pakistan will be connected. For nearly 70 years, the only official crossing point between Tehran and Islamabad was the one at Mirjavah-Taftan, which was more toward the north and close to Quetta, the provincial capital of Baluchistan.

Nearer the coastline areas, at a distance of just 130 kilometers from the port of Chabahar in Iran, this new crossing at Rimdan-Gabd can give the Pakistani port of Gwadar access to westward corridors via the shortest land route possible.
...
As Iranian state-controlled Press TV then reported, Zarif had said that both ports could complement each other, explaining, “We can connect Chabahar and Gwadar, and then through that connect Gwadar to our entire railroad system, from Iran to the North Corridor, through Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan, and also through Azerbaijan, Russia and through Turkey.”"

Iran also seems to want Pakistan to build a standard gauge link in the north to connect to Quetta, so they do not need to do a break of gauge for cargo which slows down the whole process of moving cargo. Pakistan has considered doing that and linking it to a standard gauge rail link to China. But we will see.

Right now Iran is building a rail link Zahedan-Chabahar.

It is supposed to be ready in 2024.

BRI railways in general, but also China-European one more specifically will see a lot of benefits from ZCP going away. A lot of the costs and congestion issues should ease.

Even with all the quarantining issues, China's trades with RCEP countries just continued to expand in 2022. Especially via these major new port they built.
The major one is Qinzhou through Beibu Gulf. I think there are actually a couple of ports in this region. Either way, a lot more traffic through them from New International Land-Sea Trade Corridor and the region as a whole

And China continues to get more intertwined with Malaysia in railway sector and building local factories there. This is a great way to tie up the two countries even more.

On a separate note, China is getting even more beef from South America. It makes a lot of sense since beef is such a major industry in Uruguay and Argentina. I'm curious about this new trade corridor. Not sure what it's referring to.

so Turkmenistan President visits China and they elevate ties to comprehensive strategic relationship, which doesn't mean anything to me. Obviously, more oil & gas is an important part of this relationship. China also needs Turkmenistan for its BRI routes to Europe. Paying Turkmenistan in Yuan seems like a logical thing to do here. But aside from that, I'm not sure what else they can do here. With more Yuan, maybe Turkmenistan can invest in Chinese market and buy more weapons from China. That would be it.

aah, but that's the beauty of playing Go.
a small obscure move here, an insignificant move there, and yet another inconspicuous move at the fringe, but when the grandmaster places the final coup de grace move to the kill, then the large picture suddenly becomes obvious and deadly.
even without the above grand strategy plan in mind, having more friends onboard can't be bad anyway, especially if the business arrangement is mutually beneficial.

Graveyard of "BRI alternatives":

• “Build Back Better for the World” (B3W)
• “Global Green New Deal”
• “Green Belt Initiative”
• “Global Green Gateway”
• “The Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment”
• "Three Seas Initiative" (3SI)

I'm honestly a little impressed, if also disturbed, at the sheer amount of times the Atlanticists have tried.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

Click to expand...

-Einstein

Qin Gang making his first trip to Africa. I think they need to send him everywhere. As someone that is fluent in English and quite savvy with Western media and having understanding of America, i think he will be able to manage opinions around the world better than other possible candidates.

Qin Gang will visit Ethiopia, Gabon, Angola, Benin, Egypt, the African Union Headquarters and the League of Arab States Headquarters upon invitation from January 9 to 16, 2023

Click to expand...

He has also got acquainted with Russian FM now

Now that border between China and Vietnam has opened up again, trade and leisure traffic are opening up. Good to see since supply chain and covid control issues were causing trade problems last year.

The interesting one to watch is Vietnam's dependence on China from railway passage to Central Asia. This is where BRI really comes into play. With more direct rail to Vietnam and removal of covid restrictions, this type of traffic should go up over the next few years.

A whole lot of people from Vietnam came in on the first day land border opened

This is welcome news for

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

, among a number of other sectors, which relies on a number of key components and raw materials from China.

In 2018, for example, China was responsible for

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

. With the

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

on lower than expected orders, this should at least help to reduce wait times and speed up production.

Click to expand...

yes, so this is a great thing. low cost manufacturing has now been offshored to Vietnam which still relied on Chinese input. Adds to the trade bond between them.

also, air traffic back up and running.

good report here on the status of BRI in Central Asia and with ILSTC.

This is a good summary. See how ILSTC is handling almost 50% of the good that are currently going to Europe on Silk Road. This is quite significant because most of the trading from Eastern coast are still getting to ASEAN via ports on the East coast and Shenzhen. ILSTC is mostly carrying trade from Western China and Central Asia.

Over the past year, he said, the BRI has made steady progress, injecting new impetus into world economic recovery: A total of 16,000 China-Europe freight trains were operated and carried 1.6 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) of goods, which are up 9% and 10%, respectively. The New International Land-Sea Trade Corridor (ILSTC) transported 750,000 TEUs of goods, up 18.5% year on year, according to Wang. The ILSTC is a new corridor connecting Western China and ASEAN and has been creating a huge impact on the development of transportation, trade, and economy of these regions.

Click to expand...

Especially with Laos and Cambodia, they are very connected to China. A lot of goods are passing by.

Illustrating this, Wang said that over 9 million trips have also been made on the

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

. More than 1 million vehicles have hit the road since Cambodia’s first highway, the Golden Port Expressway, opened to the public

Click to expand...

so interesting data from China-Euro railway in 2022

Specifically, the overall China-Europe volume throughput has grown during 2022, yet, it is not indicative of the actual traffic between European countries and China since the China National Railway considers Russia as a European destination along the New Silk Road.

That being said, those 1,6 million TEUs transported in the past year do not describe the actual Europe-China traffic. When looking at the Eurasian Rail Alliance Index, it is apparent that transported volumes between European hubs and China decreased by 31,94 per cent compared to 2021. Specifically, in 2022 Europe-China volumes in both east and west directions amounted to 386,374 TEUs. In 2021, this number was around 618,180 TEUs.

Westbound traffic in 2022 reached 262,194 TEUs dropping by 30,33 per cent compared to 2021 (409,458 TEUs). On the other hand, eastbound traffic also dropped by 35,14 per cent, with 124,098 TEUs transported instead of 208,722 TEUs the year before.

Click to expand...

So the actual traffic between continental Europe and China on railway dropped by 30%. That means, they must have made up the losses through more traffic to Russia and CIS countries. It's also quite possible that we are seeing a lot more transit traffic from ASEAN countries through China to Europe, Central Asia and Russia.