The future of the former “Western Regions”: an energy-rich, multi-cultural, multi-religious, geostrategic New Silk Road hub of “moderately prosperous” China.

YUTIAN, ON THE SOUTHERN SILK ROAD – We are on the road in southern Xinjiang, after a harrowing back-and-forth in the Taklamakan, across the sand dunes, to visit the “lost tribe” cum village of Daliyabuyi, right in the middle of the desert, then back to our drop-dead modern hotel in the oasis of Yutian. It’s midnight, we just finished the proverbial Uyghur gastronomic feast, and there’s only one thing to do: to get a shave.

The perks of being on the road in Xinjiang to shoot a documentary supported by a crack Uyghur production team – drivers included – is that they know everything. “No problem”, says one of the drivers, “there’s a barber shop on the other side of the street.” Actually, a boulevard gleaming at midnight. Shops still open. Life goes on as usual in Uyghurstan.

With my friend Carl Zha, we cross the street and hit the barber shop just to plunge into a fabulous slice of (Uyghur) life, courtesy of two young barbers and their sidekick, a snazzy kid playing a videogame compulsively on his smartphone who seems to know everything about the hood (he may be even running it, wise guy-style).

They tell us everything about their daily routine, flow of business, cost of living, sports, life in the oasis, chasing girls, their expectations for the future. No, they are not refugees of concentration camps. Nor slaves under forced labor. An hour and a half with them, and you have a PhD in Uyghur social studies, live. With the added bonus of getting a haircut (Carl) and a shave (myself) for under 10 bucks at one in the morning.

We were ready for the next day on the road – when we formally completed the Silk Road triad: Silk, Jade and Carpets. Silk and carpets in the fabled oasis of Khotan – watching how they have been produced for centuries.

Carpet weaving in Khotan. Photo: Pepe Escobar

And jade in Yutian itself, which is not as famous, historically, as Khotan, but now boasts a state-of-the-art jade company involved in everything from mining to the refined final product, including the finest grade: black and white jade.

Polishing the finest jade in Yutian. Photo: P.E.

In fact, it’s a Silk Road quartet, because we should add knives, in the small oasis of Yengisar, world capital of jeweled knife production. Every Uyghur man carries a knife: as a sign of manhood and to cut those juicy Xinjiang melons at any opportunity.

Yengisar: the knife capital of the world. Photo: P.E.

Throughout the Northern Silk Road, we were of course on the lookout non-stop for labor slaves and concentration camps to be duly reported to Western intel agencies. Then, on the way from Kucha to Aksu, we spotted a lady among the rolling cotton fields.

The lady in the cotton fields. Photo: P.E.

We started to chat, and soon found out that she was not picking cotton: she was actually clearing the path in the cotton plantation for a machine to make a turn and then start picking cotton mechanized agriculture-style. She told us everything about her daily life; she was a local Uyghur, had been working on this same – private – cotton fields for nearly two decades, living with her family, decent salary. Never seen a forced labor/concentration camp in her life.

Enjoying real Uyghur life in oasis towns

Across both the Northern and Southern Sik Roads, in historically key oasis towns from Turfan and Kucha to Khotan and Kashgar, we followed daily Uyghur life unfiltered, introduced by Uyghurs and among Uyghurs. Politics never entered the conversation.

We were invited into their sprawling homes – large courtyards, grapes growing on the roof; we went to two weddings, one relatively low-key in a four-star hotel, another a Bollywood production in the top restaurant in Kashgar.

Over the top Uyghur wedding in Kashgar. The bride and groom are sitting right behind “Love”. Photo: P.E.

We talked to barbers, bakers, bazaaris, business men and women. We sampled their spectacular cuisine with relish; yes, the meaning of life is contained in the perfect bowl of laghman, with the perfect naan bread on the side.

The Holy grail of Uyghur gastronomy: laghman, plov and Kashgar barbecue. Photo: P.E.

More than that – an obsession I carried since my first Silk Road travels in 1997, right after the Hong Kong handover: I wanted to retrace and dig deeper into the mesmerizing Ancient Silk Road history of those oasis towns, following once again on the footsteps of my man: the itinerant monk Xuanzang in the early Tang dynasty.

So this updated Journey to the West was, in so many ways, a Journey to the Buddhist “Western Regions” before they became part of China.

Both Turfan and Kucha were key stops in Xuanzang’s Journey to the West in the early 7^th century. Then, equipped with camels, horses and guards, he crossed the Tian Shan mountains, met the kaghan of the Western Turks (who wore a fine green silk robe and a 3-meter long silk band around his head) on the edge of deep blue Lake Issyk-kul (in today’s Kyrgyzstan) and kept walking all the way to Samarkand (in today’s Uzbekistan).

All that is like a miniature jade representing the Silk Road allure – intertwining the connection between Chinese culture, Buddhism, Sogdians (the Persian people who were the key connectors in Silk Road trade and the most influent immigrant community in China during the Tang dynasty) and Persia itself.

In Samarkand, Xuanzang was exposed for the first time to extremely rich Persian culture – so different from equally sophisticated China’s. And it was Samarkand – not Rome – which was the most important trade partner of the independent Gaochang kingdom in the 5^th century, and then the Tang dynasty.

The remains of the Gaochang kingdom – outside of Turfan.

And that bring us to some fascinating geo-strategic and geoeconomic aspects of the Ancient Silk Road(s).

Very few people apart from top scholars – and economic planners around Xi Jinping – know that the key player in the Silk Road economy especially during the Tang dynasty, from the 7^th to the 10^th centuries was… the Tang dynasty itself. It was a matter, above all, of financing the then “Western Regions” in a serious military confrontation against the Western Turks.

So we had Tang armies positioned all along the oases of the Northern Silk Rod, with an interesting twist: most of them were not Chinese, but local, from across the Gansu corridor and the “Western Regions”.

Brilliant Eurasian cultures converged, interacted and spread their wings on the Ancient Silk Roads.

DUNHUANG – Across History, the Silk Road – actually a network of roads – is the supreme Highway Star: the most important connectivity corridor ever, rolling across Ancient Eurasia, linking what Chinese scholars consensually define as the main civilization systems in the world: China, India, Persia, Babylon, Egypt, Greece and Rome, as well as showcasing several historical stages of economic and cultural exchanges between East and West.

Prof. Ji Xianlin, a top scholar of Dunhuang Studies, came up with a formulation certified to drive Western supremacists crazy for all eternity:

“There are only four, rather than five, influential cultural systems in the world: Chinese, Indian, Greek and Islam. They all met only on China’s Dunhuang and Xinjiang”.

Dunhuang’s prime geo-strategic position across History was inevitably bound to generate spectacular artistic achievements.

After years since my previous journeys, then the Covid shock, then China’s subsequent recovery, I have been privileged to finally embark on a renewed Journey to the West to retrace the original Ancient Silk Road, starting in Xian – the former imperial capital Chang’an – all the way through the Gansu corridor to Dunhuang.

Brilliant Eurasian cultures converged, interacted and spread their wings on the Ancient Silk Roads. Dunhuang – on the western end of the Hexi corridor in Gansu province – was the most vital hub in the eastern section of the Chinese Silk Road, framed by mountains to the north and south, the central plains to the east, and Xinjiang to the west.

Dunhuang, the “Blazing Beacon”, held a supremely strategic position controlling two passes – Yangguan and Yumenguan. Han Emperor Wu Di clearly understood that Dunhuang was the last major water source before the fear-inducing Taklamakan desert to the west, as well as sitting astride the three main Silk Road routes heading west.

Yumenguan was the all-important Jade Gate pass – set by the Han empire in the 2^nd century B.C.: placed in the south Gobi and the western end of the Qilian mountains, actually marking the western limit of classic China.

The Jade Gate Pass. Photo: Pepe Escobar

I spent a whole blinding beautiful blue-sky day in the pass and its surroundings after striking a deal with a taxi driver in Dunhuang. It’s a thrill to admire how the Han dynasty organized their traffic management system, the beacon fire system, and the Great Wall defense system (remains of the Han Wall are still there) – guaranteeing the safety of the long-distance Silk Road connectivity corridor.

The remains of the Great Han Wall. Photo: P.E.

Talk to the caravan: the secret of “people to people’s exchanges”

At the impeccably organized Dunhuang Book Center, historical records refer to it as “a metropolis where the Han people and non-Han peoples meet”. Quite the antecessor to Xi Jinping’s “people to people’s exchanges.” The spirit remains, especially at the fabulous Night Market, a gastronomic feast with pride of place for Uyghur recipes.

Uyghur businesswomen at the fabulous Dunhuang Night Market. Photo: P.E.

Silk and porcelain from the central plains, jewelry and perfume from “the western regions”, camels and horses from north China, grains from Hexi, everything was traded in Dunhuang. Merchant deals, migrations, military games, cultural exchanges, a profusion of literati, scholars, artists, officials, diplomats, religious pilgrims, military brought classic Chinese culture into an effervescent mix – Sogdian, Tibet, Uyghur, Tangut, Mongolia – all absorbed into what eventually became Dunhuang art.

Itinerant Buddhism, Nestorianism, Zoroastrianism, Islam – the sophisticated aesthetic feel of Dunhuang was progressively influenced by architecture, sculpture, paintings, music, dance, weaving, dyeing techniques all the way from Central Asia and West Asia.

“Silk Road” terminology in Xi’s “moderately prosperous” modernized China is an extremely nuanced business. For instance, already in Xian, at the Small White Goose pagoda, we see it described as “Silk Roads: The Routes Network of Chang’an-Tian Shan corridor”.

That’s a geographically correct interpretation, stressing the Tian Shan mountains instead of the politically correct Xinjiang (which was essentially part of the “western regions”, not necessarily Chinese territory, for centuries).

As for how the Silk Road began, that now follows a single, scholarly accepted version: Han Emperor Wu Di, in 140 B.C. sent Zhang Qian as an envoy to the “western regions” on two business missions. The “Records of the Grand Historian” show that Zhang Qian, as the first official diplomat in Chinese history, de facto opened channels of communications with the “western regions” and then all the states in the northwest started trading with the Han, especially silk.

From Xian’s Shaanxi History Museum to the Dunhuang Academy, and including the Gansu museum in Lanzhou, in interactions with scholars and museum curators as well as in complement to formidable Silk Road exhibits, it’s fascinating to retrace the now established official narrative on the Silk Roads, according to which “the civilization of ancient China represented by silk started to impact the states in the western regions, Central Asia and West Asia.”

It was way more complex than that – as spices, metals, chemicals, saddles, leather products, glass, paper (invented in the 2^nd century B.C.), everything was on the market, but the general drift applies: merchants from the central plains defying deserts and mountain peaks in caravans laden with silk, bronze mirrors and lacquerware from China, seeking to exchange them for commodities, while merchants from the western regions brought furs, jade, felts to the central plains.

Talk about multi-ethnic “people to people’s exchanges”. And by the way, no one ever used the term “Silk Road”; it was “the road to Samarkand” or just the “northern” or “southern” routes around the ominous Taklamakan desert.

About the Tang dynasty monetary system…

By the 3^rd century, Dunhuang was already at the apex of Silk Road connectivity; and that’s when merchants and pilgrims started to sponsor the construction of the nearby Buddhist Mogao caves.

The main pavilion at the Mogao caves. Photo: P.E.

The Mogao Caves are part of what is known in Gansu province as the five Dunhuang grottoes. It’s the same system of caves – 813 surviving, with 735 in Mogao. To approach Mogao is a major thrill in itself: we need to be in an official park bus, crammed with zillions of Chinese tourists, rolling through the desert, and suddenly we are in the eastern foot of the Mingsha mountains, with the Dangquan river running right in front of us, facing the Qilian mountains to the east, with the caves set back against and cut into the cliff face, connected by a series of ramps and walkways.

ON THE ROAD IN XINJIANG – Xuanzang, the itinerant Buddhist monk, has got to be one of the most extraordinary figures in History. He certainly is regarded as such in China.

In the early Tang dynasty in the 7th century, Xuanzang set out from the imperial capital Chang’an (today’s Xian), breaching a veto to travel to the “Western regions”, to go to India to fetch Buddhist manuscripts that he planned to translate into Chinese.

He crossed the Jade Gate Pass; kept walking further West; almost died of thirst in the desert; crossed the snow peaks of the Tian Shan mountains on horseback to Transoxiana; and finally reached India, where he studied for several years before returning to Chang’an 15 years after his departure with 22 horses loaded with Buddhist manuscripts in Sanskrit, plus religious relics and priceless Buddha images.

That’s my kind of guy. Since the late 1990s, I have followed on Xuanzang’s footsteps, on and off, along several stretches of the Ancient Silk Roads. Xuanzang was fictionally reincarnated in a magic-tinged 16th century novel which became quite popular in China, titled Xiyouji, or Journey to the West. That’s exactly what I set out to do – a compact Journey to the West for the digital era – this past month of September.

Sericulture was developed as early as 5,000 years ago in the Yellow River – in China’s historically traditional heartland. It spread out to Korea and Japan but mostly traveled West, along the larger-than-life Silk Road(s).

The start of the silky story is shrouded in historical mist. It is widely accepted in China that under the reign of Emperor Wu Di, in the second century B.C., special envoy Zhang Qian was twice dispatched to the “vast regions” to the West of China on a business mission.

Soon after, cross-border trade entered a new stage, with silk fabric among the key exports. Thus Zhang Qian was officially credited as the opener of the Silk Road – and granted the title of Duke. Today, at the fabulous Shaanxi History Museum in Xian, his exploits and the subsequent development of the Silk Road connectivity corridors are detailed alongside a mesmerizing collection of Silk Road artifacts.

The Silk Road, actually a maze of roads, started in Chang’an, the old imperial capital, today’s Xian. Then it headed west through the spectacular gorges of the Wei river to the garrison city of Lanzhou, at the eastern end of the Hexi corridor. North is the Gobi desert; south is the snow-covered peaks of the Qilain Shan. The road keeps going from oasis to oasis all the way to Yumenguan, the Jade Gate Pass – which marked the western limit of China.

For a Silk Road pilgrim like this foreign correspondent, this is the trip of a lifetime – combined with the journey further west, to Xinjiang. I’ve tracked the original Silk Road before, and that’s my fifth time in Xinjiang; yet those journeys were in the late 1990s and the 2000s. Combined, now, that makes it the first trip in 10 years and the first one after Covid.

Go West, past the Jade Gate Pass

The timing could not be more appropriate: right after the ground-breaking SCO summit in Tianjin in late August/early September and the Victory Day parade in Beijing on October 3, celebrating the 80th year of the Chinese defeat of Japanese aggression and Nazi-fascism in Asia.

It was the time to check in detail how a self-confident China had engineered its development of the West, boosted by the “Go West” campaign launched in 1999. That also coincided with the 70th year of the establishment of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. The whole of Xinjiang was engulfed in “70” red flags.

The first stretch of my travels was solo, retracing the traditional Ancient Silk Road, from Xian to strategically located Lanzhou by the Yellow River, dominating all traffic between central China and the northwest, then all the way to fabled Dunhuang and the Jade Gate Pass. I made a deal with a local taxi driver to spend the day visiting the Pass, including the remains of the Han Great Wall. He loved the notion of a lone foreigner riding his taxi into the deep desert.

Then I caught the high-speed train from Lanzhou to Urumqi (this line was started already 11 years ago), the high-tech capital of Xinjiang, to join a Chinese-Uyghur production team and start shooting a documentary on the road in Xinjiang.

Xinjiang, or “New Territories”, the size of Western Europe, is the former Chinese Turkestan. That’s classic Silk Road territory as well, treading along the northern and southern rims of the Tarim basin, one of the most extraordinary geographical hot spots on earth. At the center lie the ever-shifting sands of the mighty Taklamakan desert – surrounded by three mountain ranges: the Kunlun Shan, the Tian Shan and the Pamirs.

We started by following the Northern Silk Road, from the key oasis of Turfan to the high-tech hub Urumqi, all the way to Kucha; crossed the Taklamakan desert to the Southern Silk Road; and proceeded across key oasis such as Yutian and Khotan all the way to the immensely venerable oasis of Kashgar, at the foot of the Tian Shan and the Pamir, and at the start of the Karakoram highway, arguably the pivot of the Ancient Silk Road leading to the heart of the Heartland: southern Central Asia.

Countless caravans perished over centuries in the sands of the Taklamakan (“you can get it but you won’t get out”): today, modernization of China-style, we can do it in an immaculate highway in a mini-convoy of Toyota Land Cruisers.

We kept going via the Karakoram, a two-lane, extra-busy, connectivity corridor, the first stretch of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), past the blinding beauty of glaciers, peaks and deep blue lakes all the way to Pamir lands and the high-altitude Tajik boom town of Tashkurgan; further on is the Khunjerab pass and the China-Pakistan border, all the way to South Asia.

To the west, the main historical Silk Road is subdivided in the three, key Chinese borders with Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and especially Kazakhstan: Alashankou in northern Xinjiang is China’s premier Eurasian hub – where all trains carrying laptops from Chongqin or household wares from Yiwu stop before heading further West, all the way to Europe.

Socialism with Chinese characteristics in practice

China has always been a Heartland power – not a maritime power. From the time of unification under Qin Shi Huang in 221 B.C., the territorial imperative has always been Go West, towards the Heartland/Southern Central Asia. That set up a series of intermittent clashes with primarily nomadic peoples – Turkic, Tibetan, Mongols. Only at times of serious Chinese strength – especially under the Han, Tang and Qin dynasties – Chinese imperial power was conclusively projected into Western Central Asia.

What we see now in a Xi Jinping-defined “moderately prosperous China”, inscribed within the mindset of a self-confident geoeconomic superpower, is how socialism with Chinese characteristics has successfully integrated the “Western regions” into the officially-termed “Chinese dream”.

There is something ineffably eternal about the “drum beating and bell chiming from sundown to daybreak” when it comes to the Bell Tower and the Drum Tower standing in the north end of ancient Beijing.

There can hardly be equal structures around the world when it comes to architecture as music. They are like two powerful, solemn notes being played over and over again for centuries – the sounds and echoes reverberating across the mega-metropolis.

Both towers are part of the so-called Beijing Central Axis – and serious scholars make no bones about their essential role in reflecting people’s existence in History. In China after all, architecture is regarded as frozen music.

Liang Sicheng, the father of modern Chinese architecture, regarded the Beijing Central Axis as the world’s greatest urban symphony – sorry Place de la Concorde or Piazza San Marco – with the Drum Tower and the Bell Tower as the grand finale.

The same might apply to the Drum/Bell couple in Xian, former Chang’an, the imperial capital, which today is the privileged stage for scores of young Tang Barbies from all parts of China posing night after night.

In Beijing of course it’s way more solemn. The Bell/Drum couple is regarded as the guardian buildings of the Forbidden City – announcing time after time the proper regulation of people’s lives.

But it’s a stele built during the Qing dynasty, with an inscription written by Emperor Qianlong, that provides us with an intriguing parallel with our current geopolitical volatility.

It reads: “The resonant sound of the Bell heralds good governance. The magnificent buildings of the Bell and Drum Towers symbolize the loftiness of imperial power. The bell chimes and drum beats tell time to regulate people’s lives. These solid towers stand forever to carry forward benevolent governance.”

A Paradigm Shift From Hegemonic Logic

Cut to the concept of Global Governance, proposed for the first time by President Xi Jinping during the SCO annual summit in Tianjin in early September. Xi had already been fine-tuning the concept, step by step, for years, as revealed by his latest book published in English in late 2023, Chinese Modernization, a compilation of reports, speeches, remarks, notes and directives.

Global Governance propels the Global South, especially Asia, Africa and Latin America, to center stage. So far they have been woefully under-represented in the current system of international relations, or “rules-based international order”, now degraded to no-rules international disorder.

Global Governance’s main points concern the necessary primacy of international law; true multilateralism; no double standards, and equal participation of all nations, based on sovereignty.

The approach can be summed up by a proverb which Chinese scholars are quite fond of: “Peaches and plums don’t speak, but they are so attractive that a path is formed below the trees.”

Which brings us to what a self-confident China – in full display at the SCO in Tianjin and the Victory Day parade in Beijing – is trying to present to the Global South: a paradigm shift from hegemonic logic. That’s as ambitious as it gets.

China is using a series of interlocked mechanisms, such as the New Silk Roads/BRI, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and the BRICS bank, the NDB, to actively advance the shift, side by side with Chinese leadership in both BRICS and SCO.

Essentially, Global Governance should be regarded as the philosophical compass for a new system. And BRICS/SCO – which, long-term, will eventually merge – are the practical means to navigate the storm.

It’s no wonder that this process now accelerating at breathtaking speed is driving the Western ruling classes – especially in the US – literally insane.

These ruling classes – the ones who really run the show, not their pathetic messengers in the political swamp – see China with a mix of irrational fear, deep hatred and stratospheric incredulity, coupled with their own astonishing, catatonic incapacity to have a project for the future, apart from Orwellian Big Tech, Total Control, techno-feudalism concoctions.

None of the above though rattles Chinese nerves. This is something easily observed on the road from Beijing to Xian all the way to the Gansu corridor across the Ancient Silk Roads heading West, towards Xinjiang.

The Chinese Numbers Game

Let’s check some evidence on the Chinese Modernization front, updating Xi’s book. Starting with semiconductor production. In 1990, the US was responsible for 37% of global output, and China for literally zero. In 2025, China leads with 24%, followed by Taiwan with 18%, and the US with only 11%.

China is now banning its own tech companies to buy Nvidia chips – which as blowback goes it’s really in a class by itself: first Washington banned selected chip exports to hobble China’s tech development; only 3 years later China bans American imports because now they are able to produce their own high-tech chips.

Trade between China and ASEAN – its southern neighbors – is now at roughly $421 billion a year, and rising. ASEAN represents 17% of China’s trade, leading the pack ahead of the EU with 13% and the US way behind at only 9%. That explodes the myth that China cannot progress without access to the American market.

Every year, China generates more electricity demand than the entire (italics mine) German annual consumption.

At the recent Commerce and Investment Fair in Fujian, all China-BRICS trade indicators were revealed to be up and up, from volume of trade to their structure, innovation and potential.

At the SCO in Tianjin, it became clear that one of the key roles of the proposed SCO Development Bank will be to coordinate a new depositary system away from Euroclear. The Global South simply cannot rely on a clearing system de facto controlled by the Empire of Chaos and Atlanticist elites. The Russian funds “frozen” –actually stolen – by the West because of the conflict in Ukraine were mostly on Euroclear.

Prime Minister Mishustin has recently announced that Russia will build the largest ever high-speed rail network in Europe: over 4.500 km-long, with trains running at 400 km/ hour (as in Chinese technology in action), spanning Moscow to St. Petersburg (construction starts now), Minsk, Yekaterinburg, Rostov, Krasnodar, Sochi, Nizhny-Novgorod and Kazan.

Call it a massive job-creation effort post-Ukraine conflict in conjunction with profiting from Chinese high-speed rail uncontested primacy.

In more ways than one, what President Putin proposed already in the late 2000s as a common market from Lisbon to Vladivostok is actually being shaped from St. Petersburg to Jakarta – with a clear Eurasia/Russia-China/ASEAN drive.

Beijing is not losing any sleep with Trump 2.0’s new “strategy” of forcing NATO to slap tariffs from 50% to 100% on China for buying Russian oil. The China-Russia energy partnership is as iron-clad as their overall strategic partnership.

The losers once again will be the EUrotrash chihuahuas, even as the Euro psyop gleefully progresses in uber-Orwellian territory: the new call to arms is that all Europeans must be ready for war. And the war is coming next year (NATO actually wants it by 2028 max).

History will register that the first week of September 2025 propelled the advent of the Eurasia Century to a whole new level.

That was the expectation ahead of three crucial intertwined dates: the SCO annual summit in Tianjin; the Victory Day parade in Beijing; and the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok.

Yet expectations were even surpassed considering the breath and scope of what just happened.

The SCO in Tianjin solidified the Chinese push for the establishment of true Global Governance – which in practice means the unceremonious burying of the “rules-based international order” that under the new US administration has metastasized into a no-rules based international chaos: essentially an ethos of “we’ll blow up the world if we are not able to control it.”

Tianjin had not only the 10 SCO full members but also 2 observers and 15 partners – with a heavy Southeast Asian presence – discussing the finer points to be observed for peaceful development. The pic of the week, if not the year or decade, was the Putin, Xi and Modi trilateral handshake: the return of the original, Primakov-coined RIC (Russia-India-China) in full force. As Professor Zhang Weiwei of Fudan University remarked in Vladivostok, the SCO is now expanding steadily in three platforms: energy; clean industries; and AI. In parallel, Central Asia is finally being seen as a “geographical blessing”, and not “a curse”.

Immediately after Tianjin, the Russia-China strategic partnership also shot up to a whole new level, as President Putin was received by President Xi at the Zhongnanhai, the official residence of the Chinese head of state, for an across-the-spectrum state of the planet recap.

The next day Beijing was resplendent under blue skies overseeing the stunning military parade celebrating the 80th anniversary of the Chinese victory over Japanese invasion and the Asian chapter of Nazi-fascism. That was a confident geoeconomic superpower showing off its military progress.

On the same day the Eastern Economic Forum started in Vladivostok: an unrivalled platform for discussing the surge of pan-Eurasia business.

What China has proposed, actually reiterated in Tianjin, goes way beyond the concept of wangdao, referring to an enlightened, benign power, but not a Hegemon. What could be described as the trademark motto of a Pax Sinica under Xi could be summed up as Make Trade, Not War – and for the common good, or community of a shared future”, in Beijing terminology.

SCO partners, as well as BRICS partners, fully understand that China does not intend to replace Pax Americana, which always relied on the – now aptly renamed – Department of War’s gunboat “diplomacy”. Whatever hysteria fits the West may throw – manipulating Tibet, Hong Kong, Xinjiang, South China Sea, Taiwan – won’t deviate Beijing from its civilizational inclusive path.

The birth of a new logistics order

The road from Tianjin to Vladivostok mostly evolved on three interconnected fronts; oil and gas; connectivity corridors; and massive economic development.

The collective West simply cannot get rid of its pathology of perennialy underestimating the East. For years, both BRICS and SCO were derided in Washington as irrelevant talk shops. But it’s the multilateral spirit that allows something groundbreaking like the Power of Siberia-2 to come to light.

Power of Siberia-2 was planned several years ago, but it was difficult to find consensus on the final route. Gazprom preferred Western Siberia to Xinjiang, across the Altai mountains. The Chinese wanted transit via Mongolia, straight into central China.

The Mongolian route eventually prevailed. It was decided two years ago, and in the last few weeks, the final pricing mechanism, respecting market rates. This massive geoeconomic game-changer means that the gas from the Yamal peninsula that would supply Europe via the Nord Streams will supply China.

President Putin’s expose at the plenary session in Vladivostok placed particular emphasis on energy and connectivity.

But to track the devil in the details nothing could beat the arguably two top panels at the forum.

One of them discussed the integrated development of the Arctic and the Russian Far East, with special insights by Vladimir Panov, who not only is Rosatom’s top expert on the Arctic but also the Deputy Chairman of the State Commission on Arctic Development.

Another panel really dug deep , tracing a parallel between the origins of the Northern Sea Route (NSR), 500 years ago – when Russian diplomat Dmitry Gerasimov drew up the first draft of the Northern Sea Route and the first map of the Arctic Ocean and Muscovy coastlines – and the 21stcentury technology challenges.

This panel featured a particular striking expose by the CEO of Rosatom, Aleksey Likhachev, complemented by experts such as Sergey Vakhurov, the Deputy Chairman of Russia’s Maritime Collegium. Likhachev detailed the complex shaping of an Arctic corridor, carrying mostly raw materials: a resilient transport corridor for the whole of Northeast Asia.

That’s no less than the birth of a new logistics order – think IA- based weather forecasting plus icebreakers – featuring critical Russian input.

Will Vladivostok become the next Hong Kong?

So, as Putin stressed in his presentation at the plenary session, the heart of the matter is the Trans-Arctic Transport Corridor: arguably the key 21st century connectivity corridor.

Thus it’s no wonder Vladivostok’s discussions centered around the key role of nuclear energy and nuclear icebreakers in assuring stable shipping along the NSR route, side by side with environmental concerns and the trials and tribulations of securing large-scale investments in energy production, processing and infrastructure building.

All that merged with a timely discussion of the Greater Eurasia Partnership – the crux of Russian geoeconomic policy – with key inputs by Alexey Overchuk, the Deputy Chairman of Russia’s government, and the affable Suhail Khan, the Deputy Secretary-General of the SCO.

An absolutely key takeaway of all these discussions was the startling realignment being operated by Rosatom – which is simultaneously expanding business with China, India and South Korea along the ultra-strategic NSR.

That means, in essence, Russia evaluating all vectors when it comes to organizing full-scale convoy systems for 365 days a year of Arctic navigation: nothing less, once again, than a new economic and technological order.

Now couple all that with a lively discussion of how the Global South and East will be leading the new growth economy.

Sberbank’s CEO Herman Gref, for instance, disclosed that the largest Russian bank has become the second largest in transactions globally, only behind JP Morgan.

Wen Wang, from Renmin University, remarked how China is undergoing a very strong de-Americanization process, in education and tech, pushing “its own knowledge system”.