The New Silk road – OBOR – an overview (3)

Across three great continents, the new silk roads will create new ways by using the three highs, namely:

High speed trains

High speed energy transmission

High speed connectivity and communications

Some say that one might, in the not too distant future, be able to travel by train from London to Beijing in just two days and that the internet and electricity will flow across all the rail lines, roads, highways and canals, alongside the new and revived shipping routes, as well as the cables and pipelines powering connectivity and transporting oil and natural gas. In other words, a revolution in infrastructure, technology and connectivity, such as the world has never seen before, bringing unparalleled development and prosperity and affording unprecedented investment and growth opportunities.

Of course one cannot deny that many of the countries and regions embraced within the new silk roads are today mired in wars and conflicts. From Central Asia to the Middle East and beyond, there presently exists a veritable arc of crisis, where ancient and modern rivalries coalesce, seemingly inexorably, into ever greater hatreds and ever more desperate acts of viciousness and cruelty. One need only mention a few of the names – Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Somalia, Yemen, Ukraine. And too many more. The future promise of the new silk roads will, therefore, not be attained easily and the difficulties and obstacles should never be under-estimated. Yet it is not naïve to hold out this vision for the future. Viewed correctly, it might rather be said to be a supreme act of realism. For without hope, without development, without knowledge, without prosperity, how can there ever be lasting peace; how can hatred ultimately make way for coexistence, mutual respect and amity? Such is the long-term strategic thinking that lies, for example, behind President Xi’s bold and imaginative recent visit to Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Iran.

There is so much to strive for. History has not ended. Perhaps it is scarcely beginning. For those who have flown by day from Beijing to London what you notice when looking out of the window, for much of the time are vast expanses of…nothing.

Contrary to popular myth, much of our world is under-populated. So, alongside, and as a result of, the greatest infrastructure investment boom in history will come the greatest ever wave of urbanisation, something that is being trailed right now in China as hundreds of millions of peasants move to new towns and cities.

Countless towns and cities will spring up along the new silk roads. Learning the lessons of history, they will hopefully be environmentally friendly, ecologically sustainable and will respect biodiversity, conservation and hitherto endangered species of wild life. Crucially, they will provide the essentials of decent and civilised life to millions of people who have been denied them for too long.

Minister Zhang has given us a lot of detail about the international institutions and agreements that will provide the funding and facilitate the delivery of all this.

Such a plethora of structures is needed so as to meet a host of challenges and to safeguard cooperation and positive approaches in the face of shortsighted greed and destructive rivalries in the pursuit of contracts and the benefits to be derived from them.