China's New Silk Road

[eridani]

http://www.economist.com/news/china/21701505-chinas-foreign-policy-could-reshape-good-part-world-economy-our-bulldozers-our-rules

THE first revival of the Silk Road—a vast and ancient network of trade routes linking China’s merchants with those of Central Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Europe—took place in the seventh century, after war had made it unusable for hundreds of years. Xi Jinping, China’s president, looks back on that era as a golden age, a time of Pax Sinica, when Chinese luxuries were coveted across the globe and the Silk Road was a conduit for diplomacy and economic expansion. The term itself was coined by a German geographer in the 19th century, but China has adopted it with relish. Mr Xi wants a revival of the Silk Road and the glory that went with it.

This time cranes and construction crews are replacing caravans and camels. In April a Chinese shipping company, Cosco, took a 67% stake in Greece’s second-largest port, Piraeus, from which Chinese firms are building a high-speed rail network linking the city to Hungary and eventually Germany. In July work is due to start on the third stage of a Chinese-designed nuclear reactor in Pakistan, where China recently announced it would finance a big new highway and put $2 billion into a coal mine in the Thar desert. In the first five months of this year, more than half of China’s contracts overseas were signed with nations along the Silk Road—a first in the country’s modern history.

Politicians have been almost as busy in the builders’ wake. In June Mr Xi visited Serbia and Poland, scattering projects along the way, before heading to Uzbekistan. Last week Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, made a brief visit to Beijing; he, Mr Xi and Mongolia’s leader promised to link their infrastructure plans with the new Silk Road. At the time, finance ministers from almost 60 countries were holding the first annual meeting in Beijing of an institution set up to finance some of these projects, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). Like a steam train pulling noisily out of a station, China’s biggest foreign-economic policy is slowly gathering speed.

Chinese officials call that policy “One Belt, One Road”, though they often eviscerate its exotic appeal to foreigners by using the unlovely acronym OBOR. Confusingly, the road refers to ancient maritime routes between China and Europe, while the belt describes the Silk Road’s better-known trails overland (see map). OBOR puzzles many Western policymakers because it is amorphous—it has no official list of member countries, though the rough count is 60—and because most of the projects that sport the label would probably have been built anyway. But OBOR matters for three big reasons.

[underahedgerow]

1. Yup and the Hyperloop could be part of it.. It's very, very cool, here's an article on Daily Caviar

that is interesting!

"Russian Company Summa Group Has Signed An Agreement With Elon Musk’s Los Angeles-Based Hyperloop One To Explore Building A Futuristic, High-Speed Commuter System In Moscow And A Transport Network Between China And Russia."

http://www.dailycaviar.com/?p=1996

[redgreenandblue]

2. You mean there is a new darknet site where you can buy weed?

[Chan790]

3. The kind of people that need the internet to buy weed...

are the kind of people that probably shouldn't smoke weed.

[dembotoz]

4. gotta respect china..they will find a way

they do what benefits them and they don't always play by or follow traditional rules

we bluster about this and bluster about that. and china just goes in and does shit

[Javaman]

5. yup, dictatorships are great!

[yurbud]

6. this is why our gov't is freaking out about Russia & China to varying degrees

Now that nearly everybody in Eurasia is more or less capitalist, there are few obstacles to economic integration via rail transport that cuts shipping times in half compared to water transport.

If Eurasia is tied together from Shanghai to Brussels, that leaves the US an economic third wheel.

So our government is trying to break the route or set up a toll both in Ukraine or create a new schism between Russia and China.

they might be able to slow the march of history, but not stop it.