I think the main point was that the Chinese investment seems to at times fly in the face of where trade really is / is going.
The us interstate system was where there was trade already and not many alternate routes / better systems.
China's strategic concers are obvious and make sense...and yet if push came to shove and they were cut off from the sea, are they really trading via rail with Europe or others in that scenario anyway? / is incurring the costs of whole backup systems making sense?
Personally I don't have a clue how any of this plays out, just speaking to what the article is indicating.
No it doesn't make sense to expect rail to replace sea, however the article failed to note that the Yiwu-Europe rail link is over existing rails and there was very little infrastructure investment other than inland port facilities. The major drive was on the software side -- making trains going through multiple countries less cumbersome. Whatever happens to the BRI the Yiwu-European rail certainly is not to going to be the one to break the bank.
I guess I don't have any links, but it isn't hard to imagine interstate trade in the US in the mind 20th century. There were military considerations later on but the groundwork before that wasn't entirely military focused.
The us interstate system was where there was trade already and not many alternate routes / better systems.
China's strategic concers are obvious and make sense...and yet if push came to shove and they were cut off from the sea, are they really trading via rail with Europe or others in that scenario anyway? / is incurring the costs of whole backup systems making sense?
Personally I don't have a clue how any of this plays out, just speaking to what the article is indicating.