What is China’s One Road One Belt Initiative
The ancient silk road used to be one of the busiest routes in the world that connected East and West. China used to depend heavily upon it for international trade, and it is trying to revive it again. The initial plan to revive the silk road was unveiled in 2013. In this article series, we would explain to you what exactly this One Road, One Belt initiative is all about and its impact.
The Key Details:
The One Road, One Belt project is basically an International trade project that is seeking to once again, connect the East and West through the various modes of air, land, sea as well as rail freight. The route is made up of those that are currently utilised as well as older ones that the Chinese Government is seeking to revive. The land based initiatives are the belt, while the road refers to railways and ports that make up the connection between China, Southeast Asia as well as the east coast of Africa. The entire project, is said to involve approximately 65 countries across the world with a total population reach of 4.5 billion. If you do not already know, the project is set to be worth at around 900 billion dollars, or perhaps even more
Which are the countries involved:
As there are many countries involved taking from Asia to the Middle East, Africa and Europe, it brings the total number of countries to about 65. Some of the many nations include: Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Russia, Indonesia, Singapore, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, India, Pakistan, Turkey and Ukraine. There are so many countries coming from the various regions and this is said to lead a new wave of globalisation, international trade as well as geopolitics.
Each country contributes to the One Belt, One Road project as it could be seen on the map below
As it could be seen on the picture above, the New maritime silk road stretches from Italy, down to Egypt and the eastern coast of Africa, to Myanmar and the rest of Southeast Asia before linking back up to China.
For the Silk road Economic belt, it goes from Prague,Czech Republic, Hungary to Istanbul, before making its way into the Central Asian countries, leading its way to China.
Railroads are heavily used in this ambitious projects. From Madrid in Spain, to Russia and Central Asia before connecting the way to China through Harbin and Beijing.
The goal
As it could be seen on the map above, the routes are all highly interconnected by making use of air land and sea freight. The main purpose of this project is to foster greater economic trade as well as cooperation among the various countries that are participating
In our next article, we would address the impact of the initiative. Till then, leave a comment below, send us an click here