Controversial mega project – China’s new Silk Road is ten years old – News

Although the New Silk Road is a success story from the Chinese point of view, skepticism is growing abroad.

Xi’an Bell Tower is a tourist attraction. Young Chinese people taking pictures in front of the historic building, including teacher Zhou Mengfei: “Xi’an plays an important role in Chinese history and was once the gateway to the Silk Road.”

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Xi’an Bell Tower is popular with tourists. But the place was also important to the Chinese economy in the past.

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Xi’an was considered the gateway to the Chinese Silk Road, the trade route with Europe.

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In ancient and medieval times, the Silk Road was the most important trade route between China and Europe. With the growth of sea trade in the early modern era, this land route, and with it the city of Xi’an, lost its importance. Even ten years ago, when Chinese President Xi Jinping launched the idea of ​​the New Silk Road.

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The new Silk Road spans land and water, connecting China with large parts of Africa, Asia and Europe.

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Xi’an freight station is now an important project center. Local entrepreneurs like Zhao Yonglin are capitalizing on this: “In China, trade in coastal areas is much more developed. Xi’an is inland, and historically didn’t engage in much import or export business. But thanks to the Belt and Road Initiative, we now have more Of options.”

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Xi’an Freight Station is an important intersection of China’s New Silk Road.

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The inner city has benefited from the prestigious Chinese project.

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Zhao Yonglin and his Kyrgyz wife run several Russian-language online stores and sell kitchen accessories made in China to Central Asia and Russia. The train trip to Moscow takes from ten to twelve days. This is very fast for shipments from Xi’an.”

On the way to Moscow, the New Silk Road passes several provinces and cities, including Zhangye. The small town in Gansu Province lives mainly on agriculture. In the suburbs there are modern state-funded greenhouses. “The Belt and Road Initiative is a national policy,” taxi driver Wang Yingchao explains. “The main thing is to stimulate the local economy.”

Tourism also benefits

Not only trade benefits from the New Silk Road, but also other branches of the economy such as tourism. The region is now also marketing tourist attractions, such as the nearby Rainbow Mountains, under the Belt and Road brand.

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Zhangye’s Rainbow Mountains is a tourist attraction.

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This year alone, more than two million people have already visited these mountains. “In the past, no one came to Zhangye to invest,” Wang Yingchao recalled. “Now tourists are consuming here, and we locals are also benefiting from that.”

To the northwest, in Xinjiang province, the New Silk Road finally crosses the border into Kazakhstan. An infrastructure project is also being supported in the Chinese border city of Khorgos.

Italy threatens to get out of the new Silk Road

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In March 2019, Italy became the first Western country to join the $1 billion project. However, the country did not benefit as had been hoped. The trade balance with China continued to deteriorate in a way that was not in Italy’s favor. Now the new Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, describes joining the European Union as a grave mistake.

Criticisms are also being expressed in developing and emerging countries. In Sri Lanka, for example, Buddhist monks protested. You accuse the government of selling your country to China without benefiting the population economically. Countries like Sri Lanka are getting loans from China to finance construction projects. Many of them cannot repay loans to China. As a result, China grants bailout loans and binds debtor countries more tightly to itself.

Wang Jigang from the local tourism bureau only wants to talk about the positive aspects of the New Silk Road. “When people came to Khorgos ten years ago, they saw a place with underdeveloped infrastructure, a small population, and an outdated way of thinking.” Today, Khorgos has become a new city with a promising future.

From the Chinese perspective, the New Silk Road is a success story, even if the perception in the West is increasingly different.