International Trade

The traveler who garnered most fame for the Silk Road was Marco Polo (1261 C.E). He left his home in Venice Italy on a 4,000-mile journey into China.  The Silk Road was not new it had existed since 130 B.C.E. It was both a commercial and cultural network of routes and in Polo’s time it penetrated deep into the heart of the enormous Mongol empire. Along the route there existed a plethora of languages, cultures, and religious beliefs as well as exotic species, elixirs and of course silk.

It was a prosperous existence for all until rise the Ottoman empire interrupted the flow. From that point in time, it all fell into disorder. European traders were then motivated to look for alternative supply routes to obtain the coveted treasures. Among other things the situation spawned the advent of explorers such as Velasco De Gama who connected Portugal with India and Christopher Colombus efforts to search for alternatives logistical solutions across the Atlantic also to India.

Today the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has renewed the Silk Road under the term Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The Chinese long-term planning aims to integrate some 71 countries along the routes, which will envelope two thirds of the world’s population into one great network. The Chinese have embarked upon a multi-institutional effort to fill the development gap with a total estimated investment of US$8.0 trillion through 2030.
The Sino strategist recognized such flaws as depending only on the Suez Canal. We all observed recently how precarious the canal is.  The BRI has as it end goal Make China Great Again, in 1800 China was the largest economy in the world, some 22 times the size of the fledgling USA and China would like to be there again and this time even bigger. As you can see from the map above there are various routes being established. Each segment of the road with the appropriate infrastructure and in synchronization with
The Sino strategist recognized such flaws as depending only on the Suez Canal. We all observed recently how precarious the canal is.  The BRI has as it end goal Make China Great Again, in 1800 China was the largest economy in the world, some 22 times the size of the fledgling USA and China would like to be there again and this time even bigger. As you can see from the map above there are various routes being established. Each segment of the road with the appropriate infrastructure and in synchronization with