China's Window to Europe: Bypassing Turkey and Russia

China has launched a new railway route to Europe. The China.org site said that the new route covers countries and regions through which China-Europe trains had rarely passed before. It crosses the Caspian and Black Seas using combined rail and sea transportation, passing through Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and eventually reaching the city of Mannheim in Germany.

The total length of the route is 11,300 kilometres, and it becomes the 16th in a row for freight trains between the Chinese city and Europe. As we can see, this route bypasses Russia and Turkey. Jia Min, the manager of a Xi'an international logistics company, explains this as "the current situation”.

But which one? It seems to be clear with Russia. Sanctions due to the special operation in Ukraine create logistical problems for rail transportation from China through Russia to Europe. One of the representatives of the Russian logistics and railway operators said that Chinese shippers began suspending the transit of goods through Russia to the EU "because of the fear of cargo owners for the goods”. According to him, "there are no problems with the transportation of goods already shipped by rail, but there are almost no new orders for transit to the EU from China."

With Turkey, everything is different. On the one hand, under the conditions of sanctions against Russia, it becomes the largest hub for European-Russian transportation. It's no secret that Turkey has long been a transshipment point for goods that were banned for export to Iran. But Ankara expected that China would take advantage of the situation and begin to occupy the vacant niches. This is not happening. Beijing began to take a wait-and-see attitude. There are political reasons.

Despite the fact that Beijing has invested a lot of money in Turkey to create the necessary transport infrastructure for itself, it has become cautious about some aspects of the country's regional policy. Beijing reacted sharply to how Turkey and 42 other countries issued a statement to the UN about their concern about the violation of the rights of Uyghurs living in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region of China.

Beijing believes that Ankara acted at the behest of the United States. Moreover, the competitive fight between the two countries has become more apparent not only in the Middle East, but also in Europe and Asia. Moreover, China began to play the Greek "card" in the Eastern Mediterranean in its interests. Another stumbling block between Beijing and Ankara is Afghanistan, from where it is possible to help the Uyghurs. Therefore, the Silk Road, which was previously supposed to be laid from the borders of China through the territory of Turkey, is no longer there for it.

Azerbaijan also finds itself in a special position, which built its communications with access to Turkey and from there to Europe, all the way to London through the Turkish tunnel under the Bosphorus and bypassing Russia. We are talking about the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway (BTK) . Back in 2017, the maintenance of this railway route began, and after the launch of the first train on the BTK, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan made a loud statement: "We are announcing the creation of a direct rail link from London to China."

As we can see, the problem is in geopolitics, in the strained relations between Russia and the West, China and Turkey, behind which the United States may stand. But the Chinese themselves are difficult partners. The problem is that the global infrastructure projects implemented by Beijing usually involve large Chinese companies whose business goes far beyond China, and such companies are not indifferent to US and EU sanctions. At the same time, it should be borne in mind that the trade turnover between China and the European Union, according to 2021, amounted to $747 billion. It is clear that the Chinese authorities are not interested in reducing these indicators.

However, do not rush to conclusions. In order to understand how popular the new Chinese route to Europe will be, it is necessary to have data for at least six months. According to a statement on the official website of the Xi'an customs administration, the first train loaded with 42 containers with a total weight of 316 tons left Xi'an on April 13. As for Russia, it is still recording difficulties with work in this area. No one knows how long this situation will last.