Impacts of the Belt and Road Initiative on the China-Europe trading route selections

Abstract

This paper investigates the potential of Belt and Road economic corridors to serve as China-Europe trading route alternatives. By constructing a new Route Utility Function considering cost, environmental impact, mode reliability & security, transit time, and infrastructure reliability, we demonstrate the remarkable advantages of the corridors over the traditional ocean route and their heterogeneous impacts on different regions of China. The importance of considering infrastructure reliability for trading route selections is highlighted. More importantly, the analyses of this study could generate insightful implications for proper logistics planning under the development of other economic cooperation and trading agreements throughout the world.