[Salon] China green lights a game-changing new railway through Central Asia

[Chas Freeman <cwfresidence@gmail.com>]

https://www.scmp.com/economy/global-economy/article/3289676/china-green-lights-game-changing-new-railway-through-central-asia?module=top_story&pgtype=homepage

China green lights a game-changing new railway through Central Asia

6 Dec 2024

China is finally moving forward with plans to build a new railway to Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, with analysts saying the project will play an important role in deepening Chinese ties across Central Asia and beyond.

The 523km (325-mile) line – which will connect Kashgar on China’s northwestern frontier with several cities in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan – had been in limbo for decades, but the project is now officially underway and the first phase could be completed by the end of the decade.

China Railway posted a business tender on its procurement website in late November, stating that the Kyrgyzstan section would have a planned investment of 33.9 billion yuan (US$4.7 billion) and construction was expected to be finished by 2030.

According to analysts, the line is designed to be just the first component in a much wider rail network linking China with countries across Central Asia, the Middle East and Europe.

“The railway has great potential to be extended and serves as a skeleton network for east-west and north-south connections,” said Zhu Yongbiao, a professor in international relations at Lanzhou University. “For example, Uzbekistan’s route can stretch to Pakistan via Afghanistan.”

Connecting lines may also be built to extend the railway to Turkmenistan, Iran and Turkey, said Zhao Long, deputy director of the Institute for Global Governance Studies at the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies.

The China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan Railway will also offer China a faster – and potentially geopolitically useful – alternative to Trans-Eurasia Logistics, a rail route that connects China to Europe via Russia.

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Wang Yiwei, director of the Institute for International Affairs at the Renmin University of China in Beijing, noted that the railway has the advantage of running “straight” to Europe and “avoiding conflicts”.

The new railway will reportedly be capable of transporting goods from China to Europe seven or eight days faster than current land routes.

Proposals for a China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan Railway first emerged in the 1990s, and the three countries signed a memorandum of understanding for the project in 1997. But progress stalled for years as the parties struggled to resolve a series of technical, political and financing issues.

However, the project finally got back on track this year, with the three countries signing an intergovernmental agreement on the construction of the railway at a June summit in Beijing.

According to a report by China’s state-owned Xinjiang Television, the project will employ a build-operate-transfer model and have a total investment of US$8 billion. China owns 51 per cent of the joint venture managing the project, with Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan each taking a 24.5 per cent share.

In October, Du Dewen, China’s ambassador to Kyrgyzstan, visited the offices of the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan Railway Company, where he hailed the project as “an icon of cooperation under the Belt and Road Initiative”.

“We hope that the three countries will make concerted efforts to ensure high quality and standards, and push forward the progress of the project, so that the region will be well-connected with new land routes,” Du said.