by Lorenzo Maria Pacini, Strategic Culture:
The new geography of railways
When analysts discuss the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, they tend to focus on security issues: counterterrorism, military coordination, and anti-hegemonic rhetoric. This is a partial interpretation. The most significant game currently being played within the SCO does not involve armies, but railroads. Over the past two years, the Organization has taken on a role that none of its founding documents had explicitly assigned to it: that of a coordination platform for a network of transport corridors that is redrawing the economic geography of Eurasia.
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It is worth clearing up a widespread misunderstanding right away. The SCO is not building an “SCO corridor.” There is not, and probably never will be, a single artery bearing that name. What is emerging is something different and, strategically speaking, more interesting: an institutional framework in which multiple overlapping corridors – some running east–west, others north–south – are gradually being aligned, standardized, and connected. The Tianjin Declaration of September 1, 2025, sets this out in black and white, calling for the creation and modernization of international transport routes, with explicit mention of the North–South and East–West corridors, the digitization of logistics, and the strengthening of supply chains. This is not an isolated announcement but rather part of a series of documents dating back at least to the 2014 Dushanbe Agreement and the 2022 Samarkand Concept.
The first major axis runs, in general terms, from China through Central Asia, Russia, and the Caspian region, ultimately extending toward Europe and the Middle East. The project that is redefining its structure is the China–Kyrgyzstan–Uzbekistan (CKU) railway. Discussed for over a quarter of a century – the first trilateral memorandum dates back to 1997 – the line has long been held hostage by disputes over the route, financing, and track gauge. The turning point came between 2024 and 2025: the intergovernmental agreement signed in Beijing in June 2024, the groundbreaking ceremony on December 27 of that same year, and the finalization of the financial framework – approximately $4.7 billion – in December 2025.
The numbers explain why the project matters. According to the Kyrgyz transport minister, the line is expected to shorten the route from East Asia to Iran, Turkey, and Europe by about 900 kilometers, with an estimated reduction in transit time of seven to eight days. Sources differ on capacity, and this discrepancy deserves to be highlighted rather than glossed over: the International Railway Journal cites up to 12 million metric tons annually, while other analysts estimate 13–15 million metric tons at full capacity, starting from a conservative initial threshold of 5–8 million metric tons. This range reflects the uncertainty inherent in an infrastructure project still under construction, not a confirmed figure.
However, it would be a mistake to view the CKU as “just another railroad.” China already has multiple routes to the west, starting with the well-established corridor through Kazakhstan. The value of the CKU lies elsewhere: it opens up a new central-southern route that crosses Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan and, from Uzbekistan, can then branch out toward Turkmenistan, Iran, Turkey, the Caspian Sea, the Caucasus, Europe, and the Middle East. The route, just over five hundred kilometers long, includes about three hundred kilometers through the Kyrgyz Tien Shan mountains and requires a transshipment station in Makmal, where the cargo is transferred from the Chinese track gauge of 1,435 millimeters to the Central Asian gauge of 1,520. This technical detail is no minor engineering matter: it is the first indication of a problem – interoperability – to which we will return, because that is what determines whether a corridor truly functions.
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