Warkhan moment: Could China reach Europe going around Central Asia
Chinese engineers must deal with the mountainous terrain, high altitude, and harsh climate of Afghanistan.
China has sought an alternative road through Central Asia for many years as its sea routes are potentially blocked by the United States and its allies, the strategic competitor of China. The spark of military activity around Taiwan, for example, disrupts trade through the southeastern ports of China. Furthermore, the civil war in Myanmar and the Ukrainian crisis decreased the number of choices for Beijing. The option of Gwadar port crossing Pakistan turns out to be unreliable due to the possible instability in the Balochistan region and military activities by Baloch groups.
Road to the World through Central Asia
Central Asia proposes politically and socially stable ground for China to build railway and cable networks to Europe. The transit through the region also reduces the projected time to 14-18 days from 22-37 days of sea travel. Moreover, China will expand its market in Central Asia with about 79 million population while the region takes advantage of Chinese projects in traffic infrastructures.
Unlike Taiwan and other countries along the eastern borders of China, the United States shows little interest in deterring its Asian competitor in the Central Asian region. As Daniel Markey counted the potential strategies of the US in continental Eurasia, Washington has chosen to admit its limits of influence in the region. On this condition, the number of strategic competitors for Beijing decreases to only Russia since India was blocked by Pakistan and the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, and the European Union is yet to offer an adequately well-structured and well-planned approach to Central Asia-European Union relations.
However, the claims of Moscow in Central Asia and the Russian footprint in the region for more than a century bother Beijing no less than the American activities in Afghanistan until the fall of Kabul. First of all, the location of Russian troops in South Ossetia and Abkhazia enables Moscow to directly challenge the stability of the link crossing the Central Asian and Caucasian part of the Belt and Road plan of China or the Middle Corridor project of the West. In a more subtle case, Moscow considers these two regions as the zones of its influence, and any attempt by Beijing to increase its presence may be negatively greeted by the Kremlin. Certainly, Beijing restrains itself from open disputes with Moscow - one of the closest strategic partners of China in global affairs - over Central Asia due to the high tensions with the US over Taiwan and emerging technologies.
Apart from the geopolitical side of Central Asian trade routes, logistics demonstrates a few hurdles related to geography, railway standards, and climate change, all of which cause to slow down the cargo between Europe and China. In addition to the discrepancy among Chinese, Soviet, and European railway standards which make the goods be reloaded on other trains on the borders of Kazakhstan-China or Kyrgyzstan-China, the Caspian Sea doubles this situation on Kazakh, Turkmen, and Azerbaijani ports. On the other hand, climate change may shift the water level in the Caspian Sea affecting the reliability of the operation regimes of the ports.
These issues have prevented the implementation of transport corridors through Central Asia, the Caspian Sea, and the Caucasus. Nevertheless, Beijing has to accelerate the construction of alternative routes to maintain its economic relations with the world with the recent turn of Chinese-American tensions to open controversies.
Beijing’s turn to Afghanistan
The stable outflow and inflow of goods, energy resources, and human capital play a critical role in great power rivalry. From this point of geostrategic perspective, Afghanistan after the fall of Kabul is growing into the most promising and least unrivaled option for Beijing. Since the left of the United States in 2021, there has been a vacuum for Chinese participation. The Afghan territory is covered with Pakistan against India to the south and Iran against Arab allies of the US to the west while Russia is so immersed in its problems with the west that Moscow cannot compete in this front. In other words, necessary conditions exist for China to take advantage.
Participation of the Taliban’s envoy in the diplomatic ceremony in Beijing among 309 diplomats in January 2024 caused a media outrage devoted to Afghan-Chinese relations. Accepting formal credentials from the Taliban-appointed Ambassador, Beijing signals a significant development of relations between the two states. Although the topics of China’s interest in the resources in Afghanistan and the security case related to Eastern Turkestan are being discussed broadly, China's potential road through Afghanistan to the Middle East and Europe remains under shadow.
In late 2023, the Taliban administration expressed its willingness to join the Belt and Road infrastructure initiative of China. This line of land transportation can bear serious competition for the China-Kazakhstan-Caspian route, China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan-Turkmenistan-Caspian route, and cargo transit through Russia. As Robert Kaplan describes in his latest book, Afghanistan possesses a unique geostrategic location between the heartland of Mackinder and the rimland of Spykman. He continues that the Chinese realist approach targeting each group leader individually yields more fruitful results than that of American counterparts who spent years and billions introducing unacceptable ideas and systems for Afghan people.
Furthermore, Iran, the country on the other end of Afghanistan, has slowly moved to the geopolitical orbit of China from that of Russia. Iran plays a critical role as it holds access to Turkey, Iraq, and the ports of the Persian Gulf. The location of Iran was also described in the book, “Revenge of Geography”, as a territory between the heartland and the rimland. From the point of logistics, Iran is connected with Turkiye with a 1435 mm gauge that is similar to the railway standards in eastern, central, and western parts of Afghanistan. This option allows Beijing to avoid cargo change between Kazakh-China and Kyrgyz-China borders from 1435 mm gauge to 1520 mm gauge, and transportation problems related to the Caspian Sea base.
It is clear that this route also contains certain disadvantages such as the activity of anti-Taliban insurgent military groups, the international sanctions on Iran and Afghanistan, and the potential conflicts between religious Sunni and Shia governments. In addition, the Chinese must deal with the mountainous terrain, high altitude, and harsh climate.
In the Trans-Afghanistan road to the Middle East and Europe, the Warkhan Corridor, a narrow territory of Afghanistan stretching to China passing between Pakistan and Tajikistan, holds a significant position. In September 2023, Taliban officials announced the construction of a 50-kilometer-long and 5-meter-wide highway as a part of the Silk Road project. The transportization of the corridor with a railway in the future may revolutionize the trade among nations as the narrow Malacca Strait becomes one of the lifelines of global trade through the sea routes. The trans-Afghan route could additionally transit Iranian and Turkmen energy resources through pipelines to boost the industrial demand of China and alternate pipeline plans through war-torn Myanmar.
Overall, China could benefit from the transit through the Warkhan corridor when Beijing handles railroad engineering problems through mountainous terrain, achieves stable relations between Afghanistan and Iran, and finally deter military groups in Afghan territory.
The Warkhan corridor has arisen as an alternative option for China to increase its connectivity with its trading partners. This thin territory of Afghanistan may not be an optimal solution for the Chinese quest for a safe and secure transport connection, but it provides a great-power-competition-free zone currently with China’s advantage as the West is hesitating how to work with the Taliban and Russia is engaged in Ukraine.
Conclusion
The current trends present three scenarios of the China-Europe transport line. According to the first scenario, Afghanistan competes with Central Asia to become the transit hub in the future and builds a railway line in cooperation with China and Iran from the eastern part to the western part of the country. Beijing also chooses to go around Central Asia and the Caspian Sea basin to avoid transportation delays. This option derives from geopolitical thinking.
The second scenario anticipates that Beijing based on more prudent thoughts supports the status quo of the mainstream and continues the trans-Kazakhstan railway along with the Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan-Turkmenistan line. China restrains itself from controversial adventures in Afghanistan.
Finally, optimistic views give a scenario of the mutual existence of both routes and the logistic interconnection of Central Asia, Afghanistan, and Iran. To achieve this goal, Beijing needs a diplomatic uniting these countries in a platform. In this context, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization may play the necessary role to lay the ground.