The 21st century will see the revival of the Silk Road that ages ago connected Asia to Europe. Or rather, the revival of many cross roads as a great deal of sub regional routes of importance has been included in the ambitious Trans-Asian Railway Network project (TAR). Within a few years an intercontinental highway will link Shanghai and Rotterdam in South Holland, and this will be a windfall for landlocked-Central Asian countries whose access to regional and world markets rests on an efficient road system.
The Trans-Asian Railway Network, already romantically dubbed the “Iron Silk Road,” is the culmination of long and arduous efforts put forth by the United Nations Social and Economic Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), a UN’s Bangkok-based organization. In 1959 the ESCAP initiated a project to lay down a pan-Asian railway network. But major armed conflicts and insurgencies in Southeast Asia during the Cold War period stalled the project’s progress.
The revival of the idea to create a modern infrastructure in the Eurasian region dates back to the prime minister of China (1987-98) Li Peng, who declared during an official visit to Central Asia in 1994 that “it was important to open up a modern version of the Silk Road.” A few years later, India’s prime minister revisited this idea and insisted that it held promising perspectives in terms of interregional economic development. Then, in September 2005, participating in a conference in Xinjiang, the former U.S. President Bill Clinton expressed in front of an audience of 50 CEOs of large companies his support for the TAR.
The mammoth and far-reaching project came a step closer to realization in November 10, 2006 with the signing by representatives of eighteen countries of an agreement to implement the project, evoking the trade caravans that for almost a thousand years linked Asia with Europe. Representatives from about 40 countries participated in a two-day Ministerial Conference on Transport, sponsored by UNESCAP. China, Indonesia, Laos, Korea, Cambodia, Korea, Russia, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Iran and seven other nations agreed to design a 81,000-kilometer railway network, linking 28 countries through tracks and ferry routes, in order to boost Asia’s economic development by providing a direct route to European markets and to spur regional economic integration.
The project aims at developing links, first, between Asian countries, then, with their neighbors, and finally with Western Europe. It is conceived to emphasize the construction of reliable land transport linkages within Eurasia, thereby contributing to “regional and international cooperation for economic and social development.” The European Union seeks to position itself in the new ‘New Great Game’ in which participate the United States and great powers like China and Russia. For South East and Central Asian countries, the goal is more mundane: to build a new transport corridor to boost their exports to the EU and Russia.
Greater links between existing rail networks and new ones would bring isolated inland regions and landlocked countries closer to developing port towns, enhancing trade along the paths connecting Asia to Europe. For example, Laos, Afghanistan, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Armenia and Azerbaijan, all landlocked countries, have reasons to hope that the realization of such a project will bring them benefits in reducing the cost of moving goods overland. For Armenia, this type of regional transport projects is key to its economic development as now there is only one operational railway through which it can ship its goods to seaports in Georgia. That is why Armenia signed the agreement as it sees benefits of forging more and better rail links. TAR will help tackle rapidly increasing goods and tourist traffic more efficiently. Europe could profit from better and easier access to rapidly developing Asian countries like China, Thailand or Vietnam because of cheaper transportation costs and shorter transportation times.
Beyond speeches, in the last two decades the idea of “Rebuilding the Silk Road” has become a key component of China’s reforms and a cornerstone of its economic policies. It has also a significant influence on land use and Beijing’s foreign policy. For China, the new TAR project is strongly intertwined with various issues of utmost importance, particularly access to resources and raw materials which are in scarce supply. China is already constructing a dozen railways to tie Central Asia with Beijing, the Black Sea region and Western Europe. China’s Xinjiang Autonomous Region will be connected with Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan and Russia within a few years.
Similarly, in the last ten years member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and other multilateral organizations have increasingly underlined TAR’s huge economic potential. Since 2002 the Asian Development Bank is working out a development program for Central Asia that incorporates the restoration of the old “Silk Road.” Other programs and multilateral organizations are also going in that same direction.
After the signature of the agreement in 2006 it rested with countries’ transport planners to advance action on this vision. However, more than four years after the agreement was reached, limited progress towards the construction of railways has been made. The pact sets out a timeframe – signatories must meet at least every two years to identify vital rail routes – and a framework for countries to coordinate standards, financing and expansions plans, among other concerted actions. A working group, consisting of policy makers and rail managers, has been set up to work out all the details. The truth though is that the goal of a Trans-Asian railroad with links to Europe (the railroad would link Cologne, Vienna Amritsar with Tehran, Lahore and Delhi via Istanbul before reaching Dhaka and eventually China) and a railway network spanning Asia, linking cities as diverse as Kuala Lumpur and Kabul, Yangon and Yerevan have mostly remained a blueprint.
One thing for sure is that it will cost a lot of money to construct this missing link. A study by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations estimated the cost of filling in gaps between train networks of various countries at about US$2.5 billion. Who will be willing to bear the burden of providing the necessary funds and technology to put up railway in Asia and Caucasus’ less developed countries? A country like Myanmar, which supported the agreement but chose not to sign it, has to upgrade its existing rail system to meet the required technical specifications set in the agreement. Where will it find the financial resources to do so?
A lot of work is also going to be needed to lay down these railroad tracks. However, variations in track width – rail gauge – among different countries are going to be the biggest obstacle, according to experts and railroad contractors. Regional railway networks will have to be linked with one another. Gaps will have to be bridged; this task is time and money consuming. Some countries, like India, have a huge expertise in railway transportation, but other have a lack of it. In Laos, for instance, there is no functioning railway system.
TAR, for example, could link Europe through a so-called south corridor via a railway tunnel underneath the Bosporus in Turkey, which is currently under construction. The completion of the Bosphorus rail tunnel – multi-billion-dollar project – is essential to the success of the “Iron Silk Road” in Europe, but it has proved to be a very slow construction because of major archeological discoveries – traces of the city wall of Constantine the Great – close to Istanbul.
The current resurgence of intra-Asian and Eurasian trade constitutes a tectonic geopolitical change that may potentially bring about a long period of global economic growth. The Trans-Asian Railway Network project, if successfully implemented, will only further accelerate the shift of economic activity towards Asia.
Richard Rousseau, Ph.D. is a professor of international relations at the Azerbaijan Diplomatic Academy in Baku and a contributor to Global Brief, World Affairs in the 21st Century.
Publisher's Note: The article was originally published in the print summer 2011 edition of the Diplomatic Courier magazine.
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The New “Iron Silk Road”
June 4, 2011
The 21st century will see the revival of the Silk Road that ages ago connected Asia to Europe. Or rather, the revival of many cross roads as a great deal of sub regional routes of importance has been included in the ambitious Trans-Asian Railway Network project (TAR). Within a few years an intercontinental highway will link Shanghai and Rotterdam in South Holland, and this will be a windfall for landlocked-Central Asian countries whose access to regional and world markets rests on an efficient road system.
The Trans-Asian Railway Network, already romantically dubbed the “Iron Silk Road,” is the culmination of long and arduous efforts put forth by the United Nations Social and Economic Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), a UN’s Bangkok-based organization. In 1959 the ESCAP initiated a project to lay down a pan-Asian railway network. But major armed conflicts and insurgencies in Southeast Asia during the Cold War period stalled the project’s progress.
The revival of the idea to create a modern infrastructure in the Eurasian region dates back to the prime minister of China (1987-98) Li Peng, who declared during an official visit to Central Asia in 1994 that “it was important to open up a modern version of the Silk Road.” A few years later, India’s prime minister revisited this idea and insisted that it held promising perspectives in terms of interregional economic development. Then, in September 2005, participating in a conference in Xinjiang, the former U.S. President Bill Clinton expressed in front of an audience of 50 CEOs of large companies his support for the TAR.
The mammoth and far-reaching project came a step closer to realization in November 10, 2006 with the signing by representatives of eighteen countries of an agreement to implement the project, evoking the trade caravans that for almost a thousand years linked Asia with Europe. Representatives from about 40 countries participated in a two-day Ministerial Conference on Transport, sponsored by UNESCAP. China, Indonesia, Laos, Korea, Cambodia, Korea, Russia, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Iran and seven other nations agreed to design a 81,000-kilometer railway network, linking 28 countries through tracks and ferry routes, in order to boost Asia’s economic development by providing a direct route to European markets and to spur regional economic integration.
The project aims at developing links, first, between Asian countries, then, with their neighbors, and finally with Western Europe. It is conceived to emphasize the construction of reliable land transport linkages within Eurasia, thereby contributing to “regional and international cooperation for economic and social development.” The European Union seeks to position itself in the new ‘New Great Game’ in which participate the United States and great powers like China and Russia. For South East and Central Asian countries, the goal is more mundane: to build a new transport corridor to boost their exports to the EU and Russia.
Greater links between existing rail networks and new ones would bring isolated inland regions and landlocked countries closer to developing port towns, enhancing trade along the paths connecting Asia to Europe. For example, Laos, Afghanistan, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Armenia and Azerbaijan, all landlocked countries, have reasons to hope that the realization of such a project will bring them benefits in reducing the cost of moving goods overland. For Armenia, this type of regional transport projects is key to its economic development as now there is only one operational railway through which it can ship its goods to seaports in Georgia. That is why Armenia signed the agreement as it sees benefits of forging more and better rail links. TAR will help tackle rapidly increasing goods and tourist traffic more efficiently. Europe could profit from better and easier access to rapidly developing Asian countries like China, Thailand or Vietnam because of cheaper transportation costs and shorter transportation times.
Beyond speeches, in the last two decades the idea of “Rebuilding the Silk Road” has become a key component of China’s reforms and a cornerstone of its economic policies. It has also a significant influence on land use and Beijing’s foreign policy. For China, the new TAR project is strongly intertwined with various issues of utmost importance, particularly access to resources and raw materials which are in scarce supply. China is already constructing a dozen railways to tie Central Asia with Beijing, the Black Sea region and Western Europe. China’s Xinjiang Autonomous Region will be connected with Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan and Russia within a few years.
Similarly, in the last ten years member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and other multilateral organizations have increasingly underlined TAR’s huge economic potential. Since 2002 the Asian Development Bank is working out a development program for Central Asia that incorporates the restoration of the old “Silk Road.” Other programs and multilateral organizations are also going in that same direction.
After the signature of the agreement in 2006 it rested with countries’ transport planners to advance action on this vision. However, more than four years after the agreement was reached, limited progress towards the construction of railways has been made. The pact sets out a timeframe – signatories must meet at least every two years to identify vital rail routes – and a framework for countries to coordinate standards, financing and expansions plans, among other concerted actions. A working group, consisting of policy makers and rail managers, has been set up to work out all the details. The truth though is that the goal of a Trans-Asian railroad with links to Europe (the railroad would link Cologne, Vienna Amritsar with Tehran, Lahore and Delhi via Istanbul before reaching Dhaka and eventually China) and a railway network spanning Asia, linking cities as diverse as Kuala Lumpur and Kabul, Yangon and Yerevan have mostly remained a blueprint.
One thing for sure is that it will cost a lot of money to construct this missing link. A study by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations estimated the cost of filling in gaps between train networks of various countries at about US$2.5 billion. Who will be willing to bear the burden of providing the necessary funds and technology to put up railway in Asia and Caucasus’ less developed countries? A country like Myanmar, which supported the agreement but chose not to sign it, has to upgrade its existing rail system to meet the required technical specifications set in the agreement. Where will it find the financial resources to do so?
A lot of work is also going to be needed to lay down these railroad tracks. However, variations in track width – rail gauge – among different countries are going to be the biggest obstacle, according to experts and railroad contractors. Regional railway networks will have to be linked with one another. Gaps will have to be bridged; this task is time and money consuming. Some countries, like India, have a huge expertise in railway transportation, but other have a lack of it. In Laos, for instance, there is no functioning railway system.
TAR, for example, could link Europe through a so-called south corridor via a railway tunnel underneath the Bosporus in Turkey, which is currently under construction. The completion of the Bosphorus rail tunnel – multi-billion-dollar project – is essential to the success of the “Iron Silk Road” in Europe, but it has proved to be a very slow construction because of major archeological discoveries – traces of the city wall of Constantine the Great – close to Istanbul.
The current resurgence of intra-Asian and Eurasian trade constitutes a tectonic geopolitical change that may potentially bring about a long period of global economic growth. The Trans-Asian Railway Network project, if successfully implemented, will only further accelerate the shift of economic activity towards Asia.
Richard Rousseau, Ph.D. is a professor of international relations at the Azerbaijan Diplomatic Academy in Baku and a contributor to Global Brief, World Affairs in the 21st Century.
Publisher's Note: The article was originally published in the print summer 2011 edition of the Diplomatic Courier magazine.
