The New Silk Road China's Folly?

Will China’s grand plan to transform the region and the world be a diplomatic gamechanger or end up as the world’s most expensive boondoggle?

- Ananth Krishnan in Xi’an

On November 13, a cargo ship carrying 60 containers left the dusty port of Gwadar in Balochistan, on the Arabian Sea, for the Gulf of Aden. This was no ordinary trade. Flagging off the vessel was Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. A Chinese and Pakistani singing a duet bade the ship farewell, while an over­the­top pro­paganda video hailed the departure as a new dawn for the world.

The 60 containers had left Kash­gar in China’s western Xinjiang region on October 29, loaded on 125 trucks before making the per­ilous journey on the Karakoram Highway. The convoy crossed the Khunjerab Pass into Pakistan­ occupied Kashmir, before travelling to Quetta. This marked the first ­ever shipment through the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a key route of China’s new Silk Road plan.

The first CPEC shipment followed another breakthrough in August, when a freight train with 41 contai­ners carrying a range of ‘Made in China’ goods, from machinery, auto parts and construction material to toys and clothes, pulled out of a newly ­built railway platform at the Xi’an logistics park in central China. Three days a week, the Chang’an train— meaning ‘permanent peace’, named after the imperial capital—travels 9,048 km over 14 days, traversing China, Kazakhstan, Russia and Belarus, to Warsaw and Hamburg.

REBUILDING THE SILK ROAD