China uses route of Kazakhstan to reach European market
Astana, Kazakhstan: China will use Expressway route of Kazakhstan to transport its cargo to European market via Russia istead of using China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).
CPEC) will be used only for reaching Middle Eastern market, claims central Asian media.
According to details, China-Kazakhstan Europe route will have capacity of transporting 800 thousand TEU of (refers to cargo a twenty-foot container capacity) a year by year 2020 comparing to only current 47.4 TEU.
According to official reports, Kazakhstan is improving its road network and railway capacity to carry the cargo load and it plans to enter the top 40 countries with the best logistics climate and caters Chinese cargo demands as far as Azerbaijan, Ukraine to the Baltic countries. It may be mentioned that Kazakhstan entered into agreements with Kiev within the framework of the project (January 14, 2016, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Georgia and Ukraine have signed a protocol on the establishment of competitive feed-in tariffs for freight trans-Caspian international transport route.
Historically, China had electronics manufacturing units near its ports but situation was changed when China started economic growth and bulk production and then its labour force became more expensive and now the entire production has shifted to major cities – Chengdu, Chongqing and these cities are near to continental routes to Kazakhstan.
China is working on multi pronged cargo strategy to reach entire world with minimum cargo cost and working simultaneously on different cargo routes including CPEC, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Iran, Tran-Baltic with Kazakhstan and new Silk Road with Russia and Kazakhstan.
Interestingly, China had dropped Afghanistan from all its future projects, indicating that China is losing hope for peaceful Afghanistan.