China Breaks Ground on Key Rail Tunnels in Central Asia
By Zou Xiaotong and Kelsey Cheng
China has broken ground on three tunnels that will form part of the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan (CKU) railway, marking the project’s entry into major construction after nearly three decades of planning.
The start of construction by China Railway International Co. Ltd. in late April — two months ahead of schedule — was a milestone for a project first proposed in 1996. The CKU railway, once completed, will provide a shorter, more direct route connecting western China to Central Asia, bypassing Russia and enabling an overland alternative for trade with Europe.
The railway will stretch from Kashgar in China’s far western Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, cross the Torugart Pass into Kyrgyzstan, and then continue westward through the Kyrgyz city of Jalal-Abad to the eastern Uzbek city of Andijan.
Once finished, it will serve as the shortest land route connecting China with Central Asia, reducing rail distance from East Asia to the Middle East and southern Europe by approximately 900 kilometers and cutting transit time by seven to eight days. It will also form a crucial segment of the “middle corridor,” a multimodal trade route between China and Europe that combines rail, road and maritime transport.
Progress on the CKU railway has been slow due to years of disagreement over financing, routing, and track standards, according to industry insiders. Russia, which has long seen Central Asia as within its sphere of influence, was widely viewed as ambivalent or even resistant to the project. But analysts say Moscow’s stance softened after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, as its control over regional trade networks weakened.
The project is also part of a broader Chinese push to diversify and secure cross-border logistics in the face of geopolitical risks that have increasingly complicated existing overland routes, particularly the flagship China-Europe Railway Express that transits through Russia.
To hedge against these vulnerabilities, China has accelerated efforts to establish new multimodal corridors. These include rail-sea links through Central Asia and the Caspian and Black Seas — routes that avoid Russian territory altogether. Shipments through the so-called Trans-Caspian International Transport Route have surged, according to the 2024 China Container Multimodal Transport Development Report. The corridor handled 27,000 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) in 2024, up more than 25-fold from the previous year.
“China-Europe freight trains are facing increasing chokepoints, such as the recent strict inspections by Russia on our shipments. Now, by developing sea-rail intermodal transport through Kazakhstan and other Central Asian countries, we’re looking to establish new trade routes to Europe,” a person from China State Railway Group Co. Ltd. told Caixin at a recent industry conference.
Chinese cities such as Xi’an, Chengdu, and Chongqing have ramped up regular freight train services via the Trans-Caspian corridor. Transit times have also improved: Xi’an’s door-to-door shipment time to Europe dropped from up to 23 days last year to around 11 days. A new Chengdu route linking directly to Baku via Turkey’s rail network shaved five days off total delivery time.
Still, logistical bottlenecks remain. The Trans-Caspian route faces limited maritime capacity, infrastructure weaknesses at key ports such as Aktau and Baku, and a shortage of flatcars used to transport cargo in Georgia.
“We need to focus on reaching ports and achieving global connectivity. After addressing access to Europe, we also need to solve connectivity issues with the Americas and Africa,” the person from China Railway said.
A port official in Chongqing said that shipments to the U.S. and Canada via sea have all but halted due to U.S. tariffs, with some clients now eyeing Vietnam and Mexico for final assembly before re-exporting to North America.
China Railway has plans to expand its international station network this year under China United International Rail Containers Co. Ltd., which currently operates 13 container hubs domestically. The unit is responsible for about two-thirds of China’s international rail freight traffic to Europe and Central Asia.
caixinglobal.com is the English-language online news portal of Chinese financial and business news media group Caixin. Global Neighbours is authorized to reprint this article.
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