A long-distance cargo train has traveled from China to Iran as part of an attempted revival of the ancient Silk Road, a trans-Asian trade route connecting the east to Europe and the Mediterranean Sea. The 32-container train, which arrived in Tehran on Monday, took 14 days to complete the 6,462 mile (10,399km) journey from China’s … Continue reading
By Christina Lin The ancient Silk Roads crossed Eurasia to link trade between China and its Greco-Roman trading partners until the Ottoman Empire cut it off in the 1400s. With the newly revived One Belt, One Road (OBOR) Initiatives under Chinese President Xi Jinping, will it meet the same fate as Turkey’s President Erdogan asserts his … Continue reading
By Anzetse Were It is now well known that the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) is being developed under the leadership of the Kenyan government and will connect Mombasa to Malaba (with a branch line to Kisumu) onward to Kampala, Kigali (with a branch line to Kasese) and Juba (with a branch line to Pakwach). What … Continue reading
By Vijay Prashad On September 22, a seemingly nondescript meeting was held in Tehran, Iran: The Road Maintenance and Transportation Organisation (RMTO) held its first expert meeting for the Iran-India-Afghanistan Agreement on Transit and International Transportation Cooperation. Bureaucratic acronyms and legalistic language abounds. None of this seems – on the surface – to be greatly important. But this … Continue reading
By Andrew Korybko, Sputnik News This week’s East Russia Economic Forum in Vladivostok has the chance to bring the two Korea’s closer together with Russia. North and South Korea just barely walked back from the brink of war this week, with both deciding instead to enact concessions to the other and set dates for future talks. Although they have drastically different ideologies … Continue reading
Originally posted on Quartz:
A Chinese-funded multi-billion dollar rail link between Kenya’s capital and the port city of Mombasa will cut through Nairobi’s national park for wildlife, according to officials. After months of back and forth, officials agreed late last week to allow 11km of track to pass through Nairobi National Park, a 117 square kilometer (45 square-mile)…
By Pepe Escobar, originally posted July 23, 2015 on TomDispatch Let’s start with the geopolitical Big Bang you know nothing about, the one that occurred just two weeks ago. Here are its results: from now on, any possible future attack on Iran threatened by the Pentagon (in conjunction with NATO) would essentially be an assault on the planning … Continue reading
“African nations are taking steps toward creating a free-trade zone with a combined size of $2 trillion, as heads of state meet in Johannesburg (South Africa) this week,” Bloomberg reports. Talks on removing the barriers to trade and the movement of people between the continent’s 54 countries will begin on June 15 at the African … Continue reading
Hungary has officially become the first European country to ink a cooperation agreement for China’s New Silk Road initiative, a package of strategic initiatives to build the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, to develop trade and transport infrastructure across Asia and beyond, China’s Foreign Ministry said late on Saturday. The Foreign Ministers of Hungary … Continue reading
By F. William Engdahl Russia is about to take another major step towards liberating the Ruble from the Dollar System. Its Finance Ministry just revealed it is considering issuing Russian state debt in Chinese Yuan. That would be an elegant way to decouple from the dependence and blackmail pressures from the US Treasury financial terrorism operations … Continue reading