The assertion that transport corridors can be used as geopolitical instruments is a common one in contemporary socio-political discourse. We encounter it most frequently in the context of China’s drive for dominance, particularly in the Belt and Road strategy, and in connection with Russia’s control over Eurasian land transit. This may seem like an obvious statement, but it’s not, writes Marina Beloglazova. This material was prepared specifically for the 16th Asian Conference of the Valdai Discussion Club.
The assertion that transport corridors can be used for geopolitical purposes is largely a consequence of the misconception that transport corridors are a collection of logistics infrastructure facilities along an axis connecting socio-economic entities. This assertion needs clarification and adjustment.
While infrastructure is primary and foundational, transport corridors are a combination of infrastructure, services, and demand.
The principle of a transport corridor is to consolidate associated freight flows along a single route to achieve economies of scale and reduce logistics costs per cargo unit. This process involves consolidating not only associated flows, but also counter-flows. Here is where we’re talking about the service component of a transport corridor.
Two more clarifications are needed here:
(1) The nature of scale effects dictates the need for a mass mode of transport that delivers the same reduction in the cost of transporting a cargo unit with increasing scale. In other words, when discussing transport corridors, the only main modes of transport are rail and water.
(2) Another condition is a universal technology that allows a wide variety of cargo types to be transported via a single infrastructure system. So, in the context of a transport corridor, we’re typically talking about multimodal or container shipping.
A series of crises and increasing geopolitical tensions in recent years have led logistics consumers to recognize the risks of such an extremely concentrated model and created demand for diversification.
The overland “transport corridors” currently being actively promoted in Eurasia are positioned precisely in the context of the demand for diversification. Together with the ocean corridor, they form a multi-option system in which all options are competing, but also form a unified system.
However, our transport corridor formula also includes a demand component. Which route will cargo take in this multi-option system? Flow distribution is determined by a complex set of factors. In this regard, we will focus only on the transport corridor stakeholder aspect.
We tentatively distinguish three groups of stakeholders:
(1) Transit countries. For them, attracting transit freight traffic to their transport networks means creating economies of scale for their own domestic and foreign trade flows.
But, much more importantly, the corridor itself creates freight traffic, generating new economic activity.
The distributed production chains generated by globalisation can be compared to beads strung on a logistical thread. Thus, for transit countries, the corridor provides an influx of investment not only in transport and logistics infrastructure, but also in industry and energy, and consequently, job creation further down the chain.
(2) Corridor user countries. As we noted earlier, in the current situation, they are interested in reducing risks to their foreign trade, i.e., in creating and maintaining a multiple route system.
(3) The third group of interested parties includes the politically motivated entities with which we began our discussion. These are those that want to create or gain control over a transport corridor for geopolitical advantage.
Based on our refined definition of a transport corridor, we do not consider all existing corridors in the information field to be such. Some of the contenders do not even have real potential.
There are only several systems in Eurasia that could qualify as corridors:
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The Southern Sea Transport Route is the main ocean freight route for trade between Asia and Europe, with a market share of approximately 90%.
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Two branches of the Eurasian Corridor are existing corridors, i.e., they actually function as a combination of infrastructure, service, and demand. Three more can be characterized as potential corridors, in which some components of the three-part system are missing or weak.
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Trans-Caspian Corridor
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North-South Corridor
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Trans-Arctic Transport Corridor along the Northern Sea Route
The Trans-Caspian Corridor is of greatest interest to us because it is most often mentioned in the context of “transport corridor as a geopolitical tool.” This is also a very interesting phenomenon in terms of the discrepancy between ambitions and expectations and reality.
The corridor is guaranteed to have demand: it is the mutual trade of China, Europe, and the countries of Central Asia, the Caucasus region, and Turkey.
There’s plenty of time – the project is far from being a start-up born out of the Russia-Ukraine conflict; it was launched in 2013 and there’s plenty of political support:
Industry expertise should also be good: suffice it to say that Singapore’s PSA International and Dubai Port International have become partners in a number of projects within the transport corridor.
And yet – despite all this, despite the most-favoured-nation treatment that came into effect after 2022, the corridor handled a mere 35,000 TEUs in 2024. This is 2.5% of the 1.4 million TEUs of total container transit through Kazakhstan – and only two large container ships on the Asia-Europe ocean corridor, or one making a round trip.
How is this possible?
Let’s recall our definition of a corridor as a combination of infrastructure, service, and demand, in which infrastructure is the foundation. Without it, nothing can exist. The infrastructure of what is called the Trans-Caspian Corridor is not container-oriented. The corridor’s route involves multiple modal shifts and forks to national markets. These junctions require terminals, which aren’t exactly non-existent, but they’re woefully inadequate. The Caspian Sea has only one real container port terminal – Turkmenbashi in Turkmenistan. Incidentally, there’s no container fleet in the Caspian either.
Service. Until recently, the corridor lacked an operator to facilitate the creation of the necessary conditions for service development: a regulatory framework, standards and regulations, tariff policy, digitalisation, and electronic document management.
Initially, instead of an operator, an International Association was created to coordinate the Trans-Caspian Corridor project. It included eight organisations from five countries, each with voting rights. There was much talk, but no decisions. A single operator was only established in 2024.
We won’t dwell on the North-South Corridor (INSTC) in detail. It’s very similar, only somewhat worse, as the potential for container trade between markets along the corridor’s axis is incomparable to Chinese trade.
However, even if INSTC doesn’t become a real corridor, it is a very important project
(1) for developing logistics infrastructure and creating a sophisticated logistics service in Russia’s southern regions
(2) as a vertical link intersecting corridors along the East-West axis, as a factor of flexibility and sustainability if viewed as a multi-variant system of a single Eurasian transport corridor
The Arctic corridor is a completely different story. Therefore, we see its very dynamic development as a corridor, even though actual volumes are still very small.
Regarding alternative corridors as a threat to Russian interests:
1. Russia as a stakeholder in Group 2 (user of the transport corridor). Russia is, roughly on par with China, the largest trading partner of Central Asian countries. Russia, as a market, is interested in a variety of trade routes servicing its trade.
2. Russia as a stakeholder in Group 1 (transit country)
(1) Competition — can be seen as a risk, but competition is a positive factor and even an absolutely necessary condition for service development. This is also the case regarding demand, which is very reluctant to go where there is too much dependence.
(2) Like China, Russia is also an active economic partner and investor in the economies of Central Asian countries. As such, it is interested in developing logistics systems in these countries.
3. Russia’s own trade with China, Central Asian countries, and the Middle East creates a huge associated cargo flow and, most importantly, a return load on the corridor, which will provide a competitive advantage to the route it takes. In other words, Russia has considerable influence on the system’s configuration and the long-term viability of its components.
