Traveling Along The Silk Road

Ihttp://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/21/business/global/hauling-new-treasure-along-the-silk-road.html?partner=rss&emc-rss&smid=tw-nytimes&_r=0
Hello Everyone:

First of all, a hardy Mazal Tov to the new parents Prince William and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge on the birth of their son.  The little prince made his entrance into the world at 4:24pm BST weighing in at a very healthy 8 pounds, 6 ounces.  Mother and son are doing well.

On to today's topic, the Silk Road.  Historically, the Silk Road was a conduit for trade between
Far East Asia and the Western World.  The Silk Road was literally the first information highway.  Not only were spices, gold, silk exchanged along the network of trade routes but also ideas and information about other cultures were traded along the way.  It's pretty amazing when you think about it.  All of this information exchange was happening long before computers, isomething or another, texting, the social media, and whatever else was even a thought.  In contemporary times, a portion the Silk Road is being revived. In an article published in yesterday's New York Times, titled "Hauling New Treasure Along the Silk Road" by Keith Bradsher, one of the routes is being revived in order to haul electronic parts and equipment between China and the Western world.  That got me thinking about a paper I wrote almost two years ago for an  Urbanism case studies class at USC. The paper highlighted five cities along the route and briefly discussed them.  The paper was inspired by an exhibition that was held at the  Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C. (http://www.si.edu).  So, today what I would like to do is talk about the revival of this portion of this historic trade network, including some its history and significance.

Map of the Silk Road
silkroadproject.org

The Silk Road began its life as a way to protect the Han Empire (200BCE-200CE) from its aggressive neighbors to the North.  Emperor Wu Di (141 BCE-87 CE) sent a series of diplomatic missions to its Central Asian neighbors and slowly, this coupled with mercantile activities, led to the opening of the Silk Road.  Chinese merchants were able to trade their good with merchants from other countries, some of whom, came from as

Emperor Wu Di
en.wikipedia.org

far as the Roman Empire.  Oddly, the goal was not developing an export market, rather increasing communications was the focus.  The first diplomatic mission was led by  Chang Ch'ien and took him as far as Afghanistan.  Chang Ch'ien brought back with him knowledge of places such as Persia (Iran), Syria, and Li-jien, thought to be Rome.  

The mission's prime directive was to find allies and encourage aggression towards the Hsiung-nu.  Economic and mercantile factors developed out of this relationship.  Not only did the foreign merchants find a profitable trade in Chinese silk, porcelain, and other goods, the rules of the Central-Asian nation-states and nomadic tribal leaders found that trade in Chinese luxury goods was a valuable tool for negotiating alliances and them revenue  In particular, silk was a valued commodity. It was originally used for gifts and during the Han Dynasty.  Over time, the Hsuing-nu became dependent on Chinese goods.  This played into the realpolitik of the period, creating a more submissive, less hostile neighbor.  To further the Han goal of controlling their neighbor, markets were established along the border where the Hsuing-nu could trade horses and fur for agricultural and manufactured goods.  This deceptively simply strategy of supply and demand was used for political purposes.

Today, the Silk Road is being used to meet an entirely different demand.  Instead of hauling silk and porcelain to the West, the Silk Road is being used to haul laptops and accessories from factories in China to London, Paris, Berlin, and Rome. Silicon Valley-based company Hewlett-Packard is behind the revival of the trade route once used to carry gems and spices across vast territory.  The company has been doing this for the last two years with increased frequency, using express trains.  Initially, H.P. experimented with this idea during the summer months but now the company is dispatching trains along the 7,000 mile route once a week.  H.P. plans to continue this activity during the winter months, taking elaborate measures to protect the cargo from temperatures that can get as low a -40.

This route accounts for a small fraction of the Silicon Valley giant's total shipment's from China to Europe but other companies are starting to follow suit.  This past Wednesday,  Chinese authorities announced the first of six long freight trains will depart from Zhengzhou, in central China, destined for Hamburg, Germany.  The trains will follow much of the same route across western China, Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus, and Poland, following H.P.'s lead.   On June 20, carrier DHL announced that it had begun weekly express freight train service from Chengdu in western China across Kazakhstan with a final destination of Poland.

The Silk Road was never just one road.  It was a network of roads traveled by camel and horse caravans for centuries.  The starting point for the trade route was Xi'an, China, China's then Imperial capital and also know for the terra cotta warriors.  The web of roads covered Western China, Central Asia, before terminating in Istanbul, Turkey.  The Silk Road flourished during the Medieval period until the fourteenth and fifteenth century when maritime navigation expanded and China's political capital shifted east to Beijing.

In contemporary times, the economic geography is shifting again.  Rising labor costs in China's eastern cities, have manufacturers scrambling to reduce costs by moving production west into the country's interior.  Trucking products from the inland factories to the coastal cities is slow and cost ineffective.  High oil prices have made air freight extremely prohibitive and forced the world's container shipping companies to reduce speeds in order to save fuel.  The Silk Road trains cut shipping times from western China to distribution centers in Europe down to three weeks.  The sea route is still twenty-five percent less than sending goods by train.  However, time is money.  Thus switching from ocean freight to rail freight inventory costs and lead times improve.  Enter the Silk Road.

What does this all mean in the grand scheme of the ever shrinking world we live in?  When the Silk Road sprang to life, it was intended merely as a way to ensure that a potential enemy not attack it's neighbor.  Gradually, the Silk Road became an exchange of commodities and cultures.  This still quite true today when a truck driver from Zhengzhou pulls over at a truck stop in Kazakhstan and sits down to a meal with a truck driver from Kabul.  The two don't speak the same language but some how they find a way to connect.  What results is a cultural cross pollination that benefits all in the end.  This not not something new.  This has been going on for millennia and will continue.  Think about for a second, when we have the world literally at our fingertips.  Yet thousands of years ago, a group of merchants from disparate parts of the world sat around campfires just talking to each other face to face.  What a world.

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