What appeared like a vague plan in late 2023 is now becoming a reality. China is following through with its plans to expand the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and include the Middle Corridor in its investment plans as a key route to Europe. New services are springing up; new milestones are being set, and all that happens while traffic and volumes break records in the first half of 2024.
In October 2023, Xi Jinping, the President of the People’s Republic of China, shared a plan for a new approach China would implement regarding railway development and investment along the Silk Road.
A substantial part of the plan focused on the central role that China assigned to Kazakhstan and the Middle Corridor as the enablers of a ‘new dawn’ for Eurasian transport. As Xi stressed, the point behind this idea was to create a “multidimensional BRI network” where more routes other than the traditional northern one traversing Russia would also be highlighted.
In Xi’s words, China’s vision was to “speed up the high-quality development of the China-Europe Railway Express and build a new logistics corridor across the Eurasian continent that will also integrate the maritime Silk Road.” All these are supposed to happen with the Middle Corridor in focus, with China reserving approximately 100 billion euros for investments in the coming years.
Already speeding up?
Development is not something that can happen overnight for a route like the Middle Corridor and the limitations it presents. Nevertheless, it appears that China’s pledges are already producing some results. For example, traffic along the route has allegedly been peaking through the first six months of 2024.
Sources from Azerbaijan, for instance, claim that transit traffic via the Middle Corridor (essentially traffic from China and through Azerbaijan) increased by 31.6 per cent in the first five months of 2024, corresponding to around 178,000 tonnes of transported cargo. Simultaneously, the same sources claim that China-Azerbaijan rail transport increased by an impressive 93 per cent in H1 2024.
The Azerbaijani side also claims that trains originating from China will run daily along the Middle Corridor, with the end goal being to reach 250 train trips by the end of the year.