The commencement of Russia’s War in Ukraine has orchestrated a complicated turn in Kazakhstan’s multi-vector foreign policy strategy. Among the most evident issues, including the influx of migrants from Russia, economic issues, and fear of secondary sanctions, there are more far-reaching implications that the ongoing conflict presents for the Republic of Kazakhstan. One of these implications concerns how the Middle Corridor (MC) is set up to replace the Northern Corridor (NC), which might have added to Kazakhstan’s diversification attempts. This paper sets up the goal of providing an analysis of how the rather turbulent regional dynamic has altered the level of regional engagement, and more specifically, Kazakhstan’s, with the Northern and Middle Corridors.
China’s President Xi Jinping’s announcement of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2013 in Astana has brought about a myriad of opportunities for Kazakhstan to diversify its economy away from its long-standing economic overdependence on Russia. The BRI – without resorting to a lengthy discussion on how the disillusionment with the ‘Washington Consensus’ brought back the ‘good old’ mercantilism, which eventually gave birth to ‘neo-mercantilism with Chinese characteristics’ – is a strategy of Chinese investments and joint ventures consistent of two primary parts: a ‘Silk Road Economic Belt’ (SREB) and a ‘Maritime Silk Road’ (MSR) (Beeson, 2018; Collins and O’Brien, 2023). As the name suggests, the goal of SREB is to rejuvenate the old connections between South and Central Asia and link them to China and ultimately to Europe. In turn, the design of the MSR focuses on integrating the maritime states of Southeast and South Asia both between each other and with overseas markets.
The former constitutes a great interest for Kazakhstan as it entails the creation of an integrated network of ports, railways, and roads – all necessary infrastructure for the continuing development of Kazakhstan’s economy and its diversification aspirations. The nature of the BRI is conducive to a rise of concerns on whether its ‘win-win’ rhetoric does indeed suggest the mutual benefits of infrastructural projects and other kinds of direct investment for other states. On paper, the BRI offers an unparalleled level of economic assistance manifested through infrastructural and industrial projects, direct investments of various sorts, and an increase in trade. In reality, however, China’s motives seem to be less other-oriented, and as some claim, advance a zero-sum game (Collins and O’Brien, 2023).
For Kazakhstan, it is indeed a risk to be reckoned with, yet the very nature of the country’s multi-vector foreign policy approach implies a necessity to advance BRI’s goals. President of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev and the first President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev before him sought to preserve a delicate balance between regional power exemplified by Russia and China, and more recently the European Union (EU) and the United States of America (USA). BRI, to some extent, offers tools for Kazakhstan to maintain such a balance without depending too much on any actors on the regional map (Vanderhill et al., 2020).
The BRI was initially perceived to be a way for Kazakhstan to solve its oil processing issues, i.e., Kazakhstan’s capacity to extract oil and gas reserves far exceeds its capacity to process it due to a lack of necessary technology. Thus, from 2013 onwards, unlike the years prior to the announcement of BRI, close to %80 of China-sponsored projects in Kazakhstan were non-resource extraction and non-connectivity related ones and instead focused more on providing Kazakhstan with essential oil-refinement industrial technology (Lim et al., 2024). It eventually enabled Kazakhstan with the tools to continue its economic diversification attempts from Russia.
The urgency to do so became even more evident with the start of Russia’s War in Ukraine in February 2022. The War had unwanted implications for Kazakhstan’s economic stability, mainly due to the fear of secondary sanctions and an influx of migrants from Russia (Arapova, 2023). Among a set of other effects the War had on the economic and political relations between regional countries is the disruption of, perhaps, the busiest trading routes from China to Europe via Central Asia, Russia, and Belarus (Laszlo and Barkanyi, 2023). The NC is an overland connectivity route and one of the quickest ways to ship Chinese goods to Europe via Central Asia, which is now heavily sanctioned. According to Central Asia Regional Economic Cooperation (CAREC), the traffic along the NС has declined by %34 in 2022 compared to 2021 and fell by another %49 in 2023 (2024). It ultimately slowed China’s BRI’s decade-long economic momentum and forced those countries along the lines of NC, including China, Kazakhstan, Türkiye, and the European states at the receiving end, to search for alternatives (Eldem, 2022).
The alternative came up with the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route (TTIR), or the MC, a transport route that connects China with the European markets, yet unlike the NC, bypasses Russia via Kazakhstan and Türkiye. The MC was established in 2013 in Astana by the Coordination Committee of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Georgia with the first instance of cross-country container transportation taking place in 2015. The stretch of the route starts with China and goes through Kazakhstan and crosses the Caspian Sea via Azerbaijan and Georgia to the Black Sea. After that, the two paths lead to Europe via Türkiye and the Black Sea, respectively. Overall, the route comprises around 4.250 km of rail lines and 500 km of seaway. In Kazakhstan, MC’s critical infrastructure is presented by a 988 km Zhezkazgan-Saksaulskaya-Shalkar-Beyneu railway line, which shortens the China-Caspian route by roughly 1.000 km (Guliyev, 2023).
On the one hand, the MC shows some vivid advantages over the NC as it offers shorter, and hence, quicker access to the European market via the well-established railway system in Kazakhstan. Accordingly, over the first eight months since the start of Russia’s War in Ukraine, the transport volume along the MC has nearly tripled to 970.400 tons in comparison with the same period in 2021 (Walter, 2022).
On the other hand, the MC requires the expansion of its transport capabilities to catch up with the NC. The MC largely foots on the same infrastructural build-up as the EU’s Transport Corridor Europe-Caucasus-Asia (TRACECA) – a transport route that was set up as an attempt to develop a connectivity infrastructure between the EU and several Former Soviet Union countries back in 1993. Just like TRACECA, the MC suffers from the same set of issues. The low transport capacities and the necessity to move the cargo through several borders slow down the speed and increase the costs (Guliyev, 2023).
To solve the respective issues and spearhead the process, the actors along the lines of the MC continue to stimulate both the funding of infrastructural projects, facilitate integration and ease the movement of the cargo across the borders by holding meetings to discuss the bilateral and multilateral agreements between the member states (Guliyev, 2022). The European and international financial institutions have invested more than $10.8 billion in the MC in Central Asia. The EU’s renewed interest in the MC is evident given the former’s aspiration to reduce its reliance on Russia’s NC vis-à-vis international trade with East Asia. Moreover, the re-vitalization of Kazakhstan’s relations with the USA was exemplified by the C5+1 Summit in September 2023 where the leaders discussed the opportunities for American companies to explore Kazakhstan’s market via the MC adds to the discussion (Rossi, 2023).
Thus, the shipment capacity of the NC continues to dwarf that of the MC with an estimated capacity of %5 compared to that of the former (OECD, 2023). It ultimately makes an expansion of the limited transport capacities, and the difficulties associated with border control a primary issue to tackle. The planned investments can help to increase the capacity and therefore the transport volume, yet the capability of the MC to replace the NC in the short-to-medium term is questionable.
The commencement of Russia’s War in Ukraine has brought various difficulties to the region of which many countries whose economy is strongly connected with the Russian economy and market. BRI starting in 2013 has shown great potential to assist the diversification attempts of Astana. Sanctions against NC, which allow MC to develop at a faster rate, would be beneficial for Kazakhstan since the country is in a key position to bypass Russia when moving cargo from China to Europe. The Middle Corridor, however, suffers from several issues including the necessity to move the cargo through several borders, which entails border checkups that slow down the process and increase associated costs. Nevertheless, the actors involved, including those at the receiving end and those along the Middle Corridor, pursue to collaborate on how to speed up the overall process and the volume of cargo by, for example, discussing multilateral and bilateral agreements and investing in developing infrastructure.
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Note: The views expressed in this blog are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the Institute’s editorial policy.