The Evolution of the Kazakhstani Silk Road Section from a Transport into a Logistics Corridor and the Economic Sustainability of Regional Development in Central Asia

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.

The Role of Multimodal Transportation in Ensuring Sustainable Territorial Development: Review of Risks and Prospects

“…Central Asian countries are attracting investment in transport infrastructure to rehabilitate the Silk Road routes and reap economic benefits from participation in international trade. Work [51] is aimed at assessing how the transport corridor "Western Europe-Western China" (WE-WC) influenced the economic potential connecting cities and regions from the transport infrastructure quality to their export potential. The study takes a modest step towards developing a culture of evidence-based decision-making in policymaking in Kazakhstan.…”

Belt and Road Initiative in Central Asia: Anticipating socioecological challenges from large‐scale infrastructure in a global biodiversity hotspot

“…Maintaining biodiversity requires not only the establishment of formal protected areas, but also the strengthening of indigenous and community conserved areas (Farvar et al, 2018) and advancing other effective area-based approaches to conservation (Berkes et al, 2008;Jonas et al, 2017;Swiderska, 2020). Further, a landscape-level vision is needed to address the many competing interests and complexities along with the multiplicity of sociocultural values and approaches (Hanspach et al, 2020;Swiderska et al, 2020;Verschuuren et al, 2021). Values and relational thinking are increasingly recognized as being necessary for sustainable development, leading toward an emerging paradigm shift in sustainability science (West et al, 2020).…”

“…In particular, BRI endorsed projects and investments should aim to reduce poverty, to increase environmental sustainability, and to advance goals of inclusive development. BRI should move beyond current perspectives of simply building or developing transport routes, and instead build wider and multidimensional regional economic corridors (Taisarinova et al, 2020). For this, greater emphasis on building human and natural capital is needed in tandem with the current focus on reaching ultimate "endpoints" of the long-distance multinational transport routes (Dossani, 2016).…”

Competition among cities for export trade brings diversification: The experience of China’s urban export trade development

“…The construction of expressways can effectively promote the export volume of a city. For border cities, there is a closer relationship between export-led growth and transportation accessibility [ 23 ]. Contrastingly, the level of innovation [ 24 ], the stability of the financial system [ 25 ], the environmental policies made by the government [ 15 ], and the tax incentives provided to enterprises [ 26 ] will have a great impact on the export development of a city.…”