China-EU rail freight volumes on the main Eurasian corridor fell by 48% in the first semester of 2023, back to the pre-pandemic level of 2019.

Against the prevailing narrative of the The Belt and Road as a top-down strategy to spread China’s geopolitical influence, there is the BRI’s impact through its first decade as emanating «from the middle out and bottom up» via transport-enabled corridors traversing a large number of regions within and across national territories.