Central Asia, between China and Europe, is bustling
By Pepe EscobarGlobal Research
Click to read this article in your browser.
We
are cruising on a pristine, 380 km-long four-lane superhighway from
Almaty to Khorgos – finished in 2016 for $1.25 billion, 85% of the cost
covered by a World Bank loan. And then, suddenly, riding parallel to us,
there’s the real superstar of New Silk Road connectivity.
Meet
Yuxinou, the container cargo train plying back and forth along the
11,000 km-long railway corridor connecting Chongqin in Sichuan province
via Xinjiang and Kazakhstan to Russia, Belarus, Poland and finally
Duisburg in the Ruhr valley. And all that in a mere 13 days.
Along
the way, the Yuxinou stops in, among other places, Almaty, Bishkek,
Tashkent, Tehran, Istanbul, Moscow and Rotterdam: a who’s who of
Eurasian cities. It carries laptops, BMWs, spare parts, clothes,
machinery, international post packages, chemical products, medicine and
medical instruments – all manner of goods, made in China and made in
Europe. And all that for only 20% of air freight cost.
This
operation platform is called Yuxinou (Chongqing) Logistics Co., Ltd., a
joint venture among the railways of China, Russia, Kazakhstan and
Germany and the Chongqin municipal government, which is quite proud of
its “seamless integration of multinational railway logistics” – complete
with a fast custom clearance procedure called “single declaration and
inspection on entire journey.”
The
key Yuxinou crossroads is the intersection between Alashankou, on the
Chinese side of the Kasakh border, and Khorgos, a special economic zone
in Kazakhstan. The whole project may be in its infancy. After all, the
Belt and Road Initiative is still, according to Beijing’s detailed
timetable, in the planning stage.
So
Khorgos may still be far from metastasizing into the new Dubai, as the
hype claimed a few years ago. But watching Khorgos in action is a
fascinating experience, unparalleled in its usefulness for gauging Belt
& Road’s potential. As much as the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor,
the northern part of which I traveled a year ago, this is one of the
jewels in Belt & Road’s crown.
Hitting the malls
There
are actually three places to take care of border-crossing buisness at
Khorgos. I arrived, via the superhighway, at the exclusive crossing for
container trucks. Then I visited the border crossing used by Kazakhs and
Central Asians from everywhere, leading to a collection of duty-free
mega shopping malls officially called the International Center for
Boundary Cooperation (ICBC). Then there’s the train station in Altynkol,
where Yoxinou stops as do the Urumqi-Almaty cargo/passenger trains. The
actual SEZ – many buildings still under construction – is in the
periphery of Khorgos.
The timetable at Altynkol station, featuring the Almaty-Urumqi trains. Photo: Pepe Escobar / Asia Times
The
ICBC – 5.3 square kilometers housing five multi-story shopping malls
with over 2,000 shops – is a sort of neutral no man’s land. If you’re
Kazakh or Chinese, no visa is needed. But people from all over Central
Asia also come – by bus, eager to take advantage of unlimited Made in
China bargains.
The bus stop at Khorgos, before crossing to the Chinese mega mall. Photo: Pepe Escobar
The brand new Kazakh customs station. Photo: Pepe Escobar
The
procedure is quite straightforward. Customers arrive usually in the
early morning at a huge bus parking lot. They walk a short distance
toward the very modern Kazakh customs building (on the day I visited,
because of the bitter cold, it was virtually empty). Then they take a
shuttle bus to the Chinese border, cross it with little or no
bureaucracy (although the Central Asians, other than Kazakhs, do need
visas), and hit the malls.
Porter carrying the loot from shoppers at the Chinese megamall. Photo: Pepe Escobar
They
come back at the end of the day fully loaded – excellent business for
an army of packagers and porters. Then they board their buses returning
to all points Kazakhstan and other “stans”. On busy days, especially in
summer, there may be as many as 8,000 shoppers hitting the ICBC.
China’s
top connectivity access to Central Asia and West Asia markets, and
farther on down the road to Europe, is via Kazakhstan, which counts
China as its second-largest trading partner. At the same time, it’s
essential to consider that Khorgos is smack on the Xinjiang border,
which implies maximum Chinese security alert.
Image on the right: The Yuxinou at Altynkol station, in Khorgos. Photo: Pepe Escobar
|