Resource World Magazine

16 www.resourceworld.com a p r i l / m a y 2 0 1 5 more infrastructure." On March 12, 2015, the UK announced its plans to join AIIB as a founding member with the objectives of "ensuring the success of the initiative and…unlocking the poten- tial benefits for the wider global economy". It is the first G7 country to do so, even against an open attack by the White House in the international media for its decision. thE projEct: what is it all about? The project is an infrastructure initiative introduced by China aimed at reviving and unblocking the bottleneck in the intercon- tinental connection between Europe and Asia. It is a two-pronged project: land and sea. The land prong is described officially as the 'Silk Road Economic Belt,' which covers a stretch of land along the ancient Silk Road Trade Route from China through Central Asia to Europe (see map) on the Eurasian land mass. It is about building comprehen- sive systems of roads, railways and airports to make the movement of people and cargo possible, efficient and economical. The sea prong, called 'the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road', starts from the east coast of China and travels through the Malacca Strait, Indian Ocean, Red Sea and eventually the Mediterranean in Europe. It involves the building of port infra- structure along this maritime Silk Road, providing modern terminal facilities along the way and covering certain countries of South Asia, the Middle East and part of east Africa. It is estimated that there are some 5 billion people living on the vast Eurasian continent, representing close to 70% of the total world population, with millennia of civilization behind them. Historically, the ancient Silk Road made trade and com- merce possible across the continent and economies thrived along the way. But with the advent of modern times, the road has been disappearing and these economies have lost their prosperity for various rea- sons. With the emergence of China as the second largest economy and the largest manufacturer in the world, the critical mass now exists to make the link between Europe and Asia once again profitable and desirable. The project is envisioned to ful- fill that mandate. railways arE still traNsforM- iNg thE worlD Railway historian, Christian Wolmar, claims that railways "were the most impor- tant invention of the second millennium." The invention of the steam engine and the subsequent railways in Great Britain made the Industrial Revolution possible and railways extended it to the rest of the world. The continental railways linking the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans in Canada and the United States preceded the rapid economic development of North America. The same trajectory of railways (or infra- structure for that matter) and economic development will repeat itself again when the same two oceans, Pacific and Atlantic, are connected, but this time on the Eurasian continent. However, Eurasian development will differ in one important aspect from the North American experience: its population density over a large land mass has made high-speed rail travel an indisputably superior mode of transportation than avia- tion, particularly in the context of modern airport security. Europe has been hugely successful with high-speed railways. The recent Chinese experience with massive, state-of-the-art high-speed rail- ways has been another success, both in execution and in usage. China's 16,000 km of high-speed rails is far longer than any other country and is larger than the entire EU network, according to China Railway Corp. Having both the east and the west ends of the Eurasian continent already built with such sophisticated networks, the long-term development prospects of a continent-wide high-speed rail connection is looking closer to reality. rEality chEcK: joiNiNg thE Dots Rebuilding history across a continent that is home to the majority of humanity sounds very ambitious. However, looking at the milestones achieved over the last few years, including the inauguration of the AIIB, the project's progress appears solid and certain. By way of example, in December of 2014, some 80 containers of consumer goods were shipped by train from Yiwu (a city close to Shanghai) China to Madrid, Spain, chang- ing gauges a few times, crossing some 13,000 km while checking through multiple national borders in between on the exist- ing old network. The cargo nevertheless arrived at its destination 15 days earlier and more cheaply than by the conventional sea route. In addition, since 2013, electronic goods have been shipped over land from Chengdu, China (where two-thirds of the DISCOVERY DON E DIFFERENT. kaizendiscovery.com TSX-V: KZD Kaizen Discovery, in collaboration with its strategic partner ITOCHU Corp. of Japan and other Japanese entities, is building a diversified portfolio of mineral exploration and mining projects in the Americas and the Pacific Rim.

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