Not even two years into what will be a ten-year tenure at China’s helm, Xi Jinping has already made his mark on China’s foreign policy, in particular with the launch of the “One Belt, One Road” initiative, also known as the New Silk Road. This initiative will manifest in a vast network of transportation, energy and communication projects, all of which are supposed to boost intraregional trade and ultimately give China and its neighbors a sense of “common destiny.”
Although not as well publicized, the planned improvements in telecommunications infrastructure are as critical to business and economic development as the railroad projects that are to be technically and financially supported by China through its New Silk Road initiative. The virtual cloud of cyberspace relies on a physical infrastructure that constitutes the sinews of the Internet. Because cables can be laid easily along rail lines, the future Eurasian fiber optic backbones will benefit from the transportation infrastructure that will soon stretch along the Silk Road. For landlocked countries such as the Central Asian Republics, this will mean greater access to international data networks, at a cost averaging a tenth that of satellite communications and with a bandwidth significantly enhanced by fiber optic technology.
A number of projects are already underway. In 2006 the telecom giant ZTE was commissioned by Afghanistan to establish the country’s first fiber optic cable network, the same year that Huawei, another Chinese firm, received a contract from the government of Tajikistan. China and Russia have also partnered in building major terrestrial telecommunication links across the Eurasian continent, including the world’s longest terrestrial cable link, the Trans-Europe Asia (TEA), in addition to the Europe-Russia-Mongolia-China network, the TransEurasian Information Superhighway (TASIM), and the Diverse Route for European and Asian Markets (DREAM). The last of these is an ambitious Eurasian fiber optic communication land line whose launch was announced by Russia’s MegaFon in October 2013; it will be built with equipment supplied by China’s Huawei.
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