Abstract
Central Asian countries attract investment in transport infrastructure to rebuild the Silk Road paths and enjoy economic benefits from the participation in international trade. The Kazakhstani government approached the Russian and Chinese governments intending to join the Western Europe–Western China (WE–WC) initiative to boost the country’s regional development. The paper aims to assess how the WE–WC transport corridor affected the economic potential of linking cities and regions starting from the quality of transport infrastructure and leading to their export potential. The study’s findings showed that the Kazakhstan section of the WE–WC corridor was at an early stage of transformation from a transport into an economic corridor. While the Russia-Uzbekistan section continues to serve mainly a transit function and operate at the level of transport infrastructure, the China-Kyrgyzstan section has started evolving from the level of multimode transport corridor to the level of logistics corridor. The economic sustainability of the WE–WC linking mining and agricultural regions of Kazakhstan still comes into question and depends on the government’s further region-specific policy actions.
Highlights
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, landlocked independent Central Asian countries have been trying to attract investment through the development of transport corridors and propose new versions of the modern Silk Road routes to reconnect Europe and Asia
The study findings showed that the Western Europe–Western China project (WE–WC) corridor was more beneficial to agricultural regions located close to large cities neighboring China and Kyrgyzstan rather than to mining regions neighboring Russia and Uzbekistan
This study fills the gap in the literature on the impact of the Silk Road transport corridors on regional development in Central Asia
Summary
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, landlocked independent Central Asian countries have been trying to attract investment through the development of transport corridors and propose new versions of the modern Silk Road routes to reconnect Europe and Asia. The WE–WC transport corridor aimed to decrease the shipping time for the delivery of goods from China to Europe and back from 30–50 days by sea and 12–15 days by railway to 7–10 days along the highway [3] For participating countries such as Kazakhstan, Russia, and China, the implementation of the WC–WE project was expected to bring additional economic benefits such as (i) increased quality of road infrastructure; (ii) a reduced number of road accidents; (iii) higher volumes of trade; and (iv) better regional development resulting from the participation of linking cities and regions in international goods exchanges. The WE–WC project, initiated by the government of Kazakhstan before the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), serves as an insightful case to study the impact of foreign investment in the Silk Road transport corridor on the sustainability of regional development in Central Asia. It is crucial to engage regional governments and key economic players in the discussion on how they can benefit from the use of the WE–WC corridor
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