Understanding the Middle Corridor

The West ought to double down on its economic support for trade routes through Central Asia, even if it simultaneously aids China in the short term.

On October 21, Bahnoperator Austria and KTZ Express, a subsidiary of Kazakhstan Railways, signed a memorandum outlining their intention to regularly ship cargo to one another through the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route (TITR), also known as the Middle Corridor. This is the latest development in the vertiginous growth of the TITR, already circumventing trade via Russia and laying the groundwork for further cooperation between the West and Central Asia.

Goods originating in China that flow through the TITR can expect to traverse Kazakhstan, the Caspian Sea, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, where they then either branch off to Turkiye or travel across the Black Sea, finishing in Bulgaria, Romania, or Ukraine. From Turkiye, these goods can be expedited to the Mediterranean, and from Ukraine, they can move forward to Poland. Conspicuously absent from this arrangement is Russia, which remains the bastion of the Northern Corridor.

As Rovshan Rustamov, Chairman of Azerbaijan Railways CJSC, pointed out in an interview last month, significant shifts are taking place in global logistics markets. Persistent sanctions from the Ukraine War have dissuaded companies from trading with Russia. Accordingly, the TITR saw an incredible 70 percent surge in freight volumes from January to September 2024.

Countries adjacent to the corridor have demonstrated interest in increasing their involvement. For instance, Turkmenistan and the European Union (EU) launcheda Coordination Platform to integrate Central Asian countries into the TITR further and advance the infrastructure projects that make the corridor possible in the first place. Indeed, congestion points, especially in Kazakhstan, have producedundesirable border wait times that may push companies to look for alternative routes.

The West can encourage long-term commercial ties with Kazakhstan, which finds itself at the crossroads of several initiatives, by funding its infrastructure projects and providing logistical aid to its businesses. During the very same January to September 2024 period, the volume of containers sent from Russia to China through Kazakhstan rose by 63 percent compared to the same nine-month span in 2023. On top of this existing trade route, the aforementioned KTZ Express is working with Russian and Chinese partners to build CRK Terminal, a new transport and logistics center, in the Moscow region.

In short, Kazakhstan is deftly navigating between Western and Russo-Chinese trade offers, selecting those that most closely align with its national interests. It is also courting new partners. Last month in Astana, Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev emphasized how Germany can play a key role in tying the TITR to the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) and the Global Gateway, an infrastructure investment project seen as an alternative to China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

This initially appears contradictory. China’s enthusiasm for the Middle Corridor, driven by its desire to facilitate trade with Europe, has arguably been one of the leading factors in its rapid expansion. Once again, though, Kazakhstan is not looking to pick between the Global Gateway and the BRI. If it is able to reap the fruits of both—Astana and Beijing have undertaken fifty-two projects collectively worth over $21.2 billion—it will do so. Insisting that Kazakhstan reject Chinese funding is a losing strategy.

Instead, the West ought to double down on its economic support to trade routes such as the Middle Corridor, even if they simultaneously aid China in the short term. All the goods going from Beijing to Europe through the TITR were previously doing so through the Northern Corridor through Russia, so remaining connected with China via Central Asia is not creating a new system of dependence. Rather, it simply reduces the time that it takes for Chinese goods to reach Europe. By contributing to infrastructure projects and overland terminals that benefit Central Asian countries, the West is securing long-term trading partners and obtaining additional control over the goods that pass through Eurasian routes.

American development agencies can offer support to their European counterparts already collaborating with Central Asian businesses to maximize the TITR’s efficiency. If the West is able to yield indispensable aid to countries such as Kazakhstan while proposing more flexible terms than Chinese investors, it will prove itself as a peer regional competitor with Moscow and Beijing.