President Joe Biden and his allies on Saturday announced plans to build a rail and shipping corridor linking India with the Middle East and Europe, an ambitious project aimed at fostering economic growth and political cooperation.

“This is a big deal,” said Biden. “This is a really big deal.”

The corridor, outlined at the annual Group of 20 summit of the world’s top economies, would help boost trade, deliver energy resources and improve digital connectivity. It would include India, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Israel and the European Union, said Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser.

  • tallwookie@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    with a fair bit of the manufacturing leaving China for India, Bangladesh, and other SE Asian countries it makes a lot of sense to invest in rail. smart move there.

    • jantin@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      China does not have one road anymore. Once Russia invaded Ukraine the entire project collapsed. It is not possible to run the rail from China to Poland (there already was a functioning hub for China-EU railway transport in central Poland before the war) without crossing Ukraine or Russia and Belarus. And all three of these countries are kinda off-limit for who-know-how long. Meanwhile the West kinda soured on the Chinese products and offshoring so once the war is over there will be no more incentive to resume large-scale operations of the belt and road.

      • tallwookie@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        plus, this “rail to india” plan completely cuts out China - no one is going to drill a train tunnel under the Himalayans just so China can get connected. China certainly wont, they dont get along with India that well

        • jantin@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Maybe the deep state top secret high-profile analysts in the US figured out that a country with unstable demography, unreliable economic data and half of the economy either propped up by the state coffers or hand-steered by The Party is a less lucrative business partner than a larger, younger, more democratic country which speaks English to boot.

  • EmpathicVagrant@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    America, bringing our horrible infrastructure practices to a Palestine near you.

    Easiest way to make “East Palestine train wreck chemical spillage” disappear on the internet is to repeat it elsewhere to confuse people.

  • Armen12@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Giving third world dictators even more power doesn’t sound like a good deal for anyone living in those regions

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      It’s not like India isn’t already shipping huge amounts of goods to Europe. They just do it on heavily polluting ships. Rail is the greenest shipping solution.

    • eskimofry@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      What’s the alternative? It’s easy to comment on it like the universe was created today. But we are all born into the world as it exists. That means understanding the history and geopolitics of the regions in question. One can’t just jump in and say that they don’t like Xi Jin Ping on the global stage, because the west was happily content leaning on the cheap labour of China for the past 50 years. Nevermind the fact that U.S saudi relationship has existed for well over 50 years now or more.