Khorgos: New Silk Road Documentary

The central station of the Silk Road Economic Belt.

While we’re all sitting inside doing our quarantines I figured that I’d share this film that I worked on with BBC in 2017 about the role of the Khorgos / Horgos region in the Silk Road Economic Belt.

I’ve visited this area on the border of Kazakhstan and China many times over the past five years of my Silk Road travels, and I believe this film caps off an era in the development of both Khorgos and the broader New Silk Road. It was all hope and cheer back then — infrastructure was newly built and put into operation, the dry port was doubling its volume of trains by the year, and the ICBC duty-free zone was showing signs of coming alive.

Then things got difficult, the honeymoon was over and the prospects of the Belt and Road (BRI) got a little darker in almost every region it touched.

So in many ways this film kind of represents the end of the happy-happy first era of the New Silk Road when everyone was talking about win-win scenarios and rising tides lifting all ships and nobody knowing what debt trap even was. It me smile nostalgically for days that are now gone and real potential that was squandered. Good quarantine watching, I suppose.

Please give it a watch below and let me know what you think or if you have any questions in the comments.

Walk Slow,

Wade