China plans a new Silk Road
April 15th, 2011 - 2:20 pm ICT by IANS
Beijing, April 15 (IANS) China plans to build a “New Silk Road” that will traverse through Central Asia and head for Europe to facilitate trade, an official said.
Construction will soon start on a 213-km expressway that will run between Kashgar and Erkeshtam and it is expected to be put to use in September 2013, said China Daily quoting sources with the Xinjiang administration.
It will cost 4.3 billion yuan ($660 million) and has been described as the first expressway to cross the Pamirs Plateau and give access to Central Asia.
The original Silk Road linked Europe and Asia and it was the most well-known trading route of ancient Chinese civilization. Trade in silk went up under the Han Dynasty (202 BC - AD 220) in the first and second centuries AD. The old 7,000-mile route went through China, Northern India, Central Asia, and the Parthian and Roman empires.
Ju Chengzhi, a senior official at the transport ministry, told China Daily that Kashgar-Erkeshtam expressway is a section of the proposed new link between Asia and Europe.
The route will start in Lianyungang in Jiangsu province, and traverse through Xi’an, in Shaanxi province, before reaching the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region.
Ju said the proposed route will run through Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Iran and Turkey before reaching Europe.
“The route will link China with major countries in Central Asia, Western Asia and Europe. It will pass these countries’ administrative centers, major cities and resource-producing areas,” China Daily quoted Ju as saying.
Ju said China has also proposed two other roads between China and Europe. While one is proposed to go through Kazakhstan and Russia, the other will go through Kazakhstan via the Caspian Sea.
Xinhua reported two years back that China’s trade with Central Asian countries has grown nearly 50 times in the 17 years between 1992 and 2008.
The report said the trading turnover between China and the five Central Asian countries was $527 million back in 1992 but had gone up to $25.2 billion by 2008.
-Indo-Asian News Service
rd/vt
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Tags: administrative centers, ancient chinese civilization, asia and europe, asian countries, caspian sea, china daily, countries in central asia, han dynasty, india central, jiangsu province, kashgar, lianyungang, northern india, quoting sources, roman empires, silk road, transport ministry, western asia, xinhua, xinjiang uygur autonomous region