New life for Asia's 21st century Silk
Road By Raja M
MUMBAI -
India, China and Russia have joined 23 countries in a
literally far-reaching agreement to complete the 140,000
kilometer-long Asian Highway, a behemoth project already
sowing visions of a new Asian commercial and cultural
unity. The highway links Asian capitals, major
industrial hubs, tourist hot spots, as well as air,
river and sea ports.
In Shanghai on April 27,
during the 60th annual meeting of the United Nations
Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific
(ESCAP), India and China joined efforts to re-energize
the Asian Highway project that ESCAP first initiated in
1959. Pakistan, Iran, Indonesia, Japan, Mongolia,
Kazakhstan, South Korea, Turkey and Vietnam were among
the 23 other countries that inked the agreement as well.
Bangladesh, North Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines,
Singapore and Turkmenistan are holding out. Russia
signed during the first week of May.
The highway
is expected to boost trade and give land-locked
countries improved access to sea ports. Visions of a
unified currency for an Asian Union, similar to that of
the Euro and the European Union, might be a bit
premature or belong to political fiction, but Kim
Hak-Su, executive secretary of ESCAP, is already
dreaming. "We took note of the precedent of Europe -
that the Europe Economic Community started from the
north linkage," he told media. "Now they are freely
moving without visas. Our dream is something like that -
so that will be the final aim." He added that the
potential is "enormous".
UNESCAP officials say
83 percent of the road network is ready, and estimate an
additional US$16 billion is needed for upgrading highway
signage. Countries such as Japan and South Korea and
funding agencies such as the World Bank and the Asian
Development Bank have been financing the project.
China and the Russian Federation, with 25,579
kms and 16,869 kms respectively, have the longest
stretches of the network that will reach from Southeast
Asian jungles to Central Asian deserts. In India, Asian
Highway routes cover 11,400 kms. The network will use
existing roads, many of which will be upgraded. Each
road in the network will be required to meet minimum
engineering standards. The 83 planned routes on the
highway will include rest houses, restaurants and gift
shops that will undoubtedly stock Asian specialties from
Indian sweets, Sri Lankan spices to Iranian dried
fruits.
The vast expanse of the Asian Highway
promptly conjured comparisons to the legendary Silk
Road, with experts drooling over the anticipated
effects, similar to the economic boom in Europe
following the Economic Commission for Europe in 1975.
The Silk Road, one of the world's oldest and most
historically significant trade routes, evokes images of
ancient caravans loaded with gold, ivory, silk, gems,
exotic cultures, traditions and ideas, wending their way
to the west from China.
The new highway appears
as an expanded 21st century version of the Silk Road and
its hey days, when a 17-year-old Venetian business
apprentice, Marco Polo, took the Silk Route through
Persia. He arrived in 1271 AD at Khanbalik (the site of
present day Beijing on Asian Highway AH1) and eventually
reached the fabled Xanadu, the summer palace of Mongol
Emperor Kublai Khan.
AH1, the longest and
flagship route in the Asian Highway network, would have
delighted Marco Polo. He and Kublai Khan's grandfather
Genghis Khan could start their drive on AH1 in a
captured Land Cruiser from Tokyo, drive to Fukuoka in
Kyushu Island, take the ferry across the Sea of Japan to
Pusan in South Korea. From there, their journey on AH1
continues on mainland Asia, to the South Korean capital
Seoul to Pyongyang in North Korea, onwards to Beijing
and other Chinese cities down south such as Shijiazhuang
and Zhengzhou.
Marco Polo's Rover next dips on
AH1 to Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam and then to
Phnom Penh in Cambodia. If Genghis Khan approves, they
could take a break in Bangkok, then stop over at
Kanchanaburi in Thailand and gawk at the Bridge over the
River Kwai, and then drive into Myanmar's ancient royal
capital Mandalay. The AH1 further winds into the
northeastern Indian towns of Imphal, Shillong and
through Bangladesh.
With its black or
white-inscribed Asian Highway signage, it then rolls
back into India, to Kolkata, Agra, New Delhi, into
Pakistan to Lahore and Islamabad, and touches Kabul in
Afghanistan, through the Central Asia cities of Kandahar
in Afghanistan through Tehran in Iran, and links
Azerbaijan, Armenia, Istanbul and Ankara in Turkey.
Marco Polo and Genghis Khan end their AH1 odyssey at the
Bulgarian border town of Kapikule at the Turkish
frontier.
Similar to the AH1, other routes
network across Asia like a spider's intercontinental
web. For instance, if Marco Polo and Genghis fancy, they
could curve up north from the AH1 at Teheran, turn onto
the AH8 and drive through Georgia to Moscow and beyond
to Torpynovka, the eastern most point of the Asian
Highway. Island countries like Japan, the Philippines
and Sri Lanka will be linked through ferries to mainland
countries.
The 26-page intergovernmental
agreement, the first-ever from ESCAP, specifies highway
signage, speed limits and access rules. The primary
access highways, the highest-grade variety, are to be
used exclusively by cars and not two wheelers to ensure
traffic safety.
Single-digit routes such as AH1
signify highways crossing many sub-regions. Two and
three digit routes represent highways within
sub-regions, such as route numbers 10-29 and 100-299,
which are allocated to the Southeast Asia sub-regions
including Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia,
Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and
Vietnam. Route numbers 60-89 and 600-899 were designated
for North, Central and Southwest Asian sub-regions,
including Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia and
Iran.
According to ESCAP, signing the agreement
on the network does not mean "free" cross-border
transport. The last paragraph in page seven of the
intergovernmental agreement ends significantly with:
"Nothing in this agreement shall be construed as
acceptance of an obligation by any party to permit the
movement of goods and passenger traffic across its
territory."
Not everyone is dancing joyously
about the prospect of a highway across the world's
largest continent. Last year, National Geographic
reported that conservationists and biologists worldwide
are protesting that about one million gazelles in
Mongolia's eastern steppe are being threatened by the
2,600 km Millennium Highway, part of the Asian Highway
through Mongolia, in an area considered the largest
intact temperate grassland in the world.
But no
one in Shanghai last fortnight was discussing such
worries. Instead, Asian nations are already talking of a
trans-Asian railway network, in a continent getting
smaller in distance and bigger in ambition.
Raja M is an independent writer based
in Mumbai, India
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