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.

Construction of a new railway line Darbaza — Maktaaral with a length of 152 km started in Turkestan region. Alikhan Smailov, Prime Minister of the Republic of Kazakhstan, gave an official start to the works in the mode of teleconference.