Commentary & Analysis

The prolonged instability across the Middle East has exposed a major weakness in global connectivity: The world depends heavily on a few maritime chokepoints that can be disrupted by relatively low-cost military tools. China is at the center of these shifts. The security of sea lanes stretching from the Gulf and the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea is tied to Beijing’s access to energy and export markets.

For decades, China’s trade model was built around maritime commerce. Chinese manufacturing power depended on stable shipping lanes and cheap energy transported by tanker from East Asia to Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and North America. This model worked well in an era when the U.S. Navy underwrote the security of major sea lanes and when regional conflicts rarely threatened maritime exchange. That equation is now under increasing pressure. The Red Sea crisis – Houthi attacks on shipping – war in and around Iran, and the blockage of the Strait of Hormuz have shown that a few drones, missiles, mines, or asymmetric attacks can impose major costs on global shipping.

Amidst these pressures, China, as the world’s largest trading power and one of the world’s largest crude importers, remains heavily dependent on oil imports. Indeed, in 2025, the country imported a record 557.73 million tons of crude oil, or around 11.55 million barrels per day. This reality is pushing China to reduce its level of dependence by focusing more on overland routes. This is not a complete switch from sea to land, but rather an effort toward broader diversification: more pipelines, more rail corridors, more inland logistics hubs, emphasis on trade with and transit through Central Asia, which means greater attention to the Middle Corridor, and deeper energy ties with Russia and Turkmenistan.

China’s long-discussed “Malacca dilemma” has typically referred to its dependence on the narrow Strait of Malacca, through which much of its energy and trade flows pass before reaching the South China Sea. But the same logic now applies to other chokepoints such as Bab al-Mandeb and the Strait of Hormuz. If any of these routes becomes unreliable, Chinese trade faces delays, insurance hikes, rerouting costs, and potential supply disruptions.

The lesson for Beijing is that maritime trade can be disrupted by actors that do not possess blue-water navies. In other words, Iran, the Houthis, and other actors do not need to defeat major naval powers to affect global trade. A drone strike against a tanker, a missile fired toward a commercial vessel, or the threat of mining a chokepoint can be enough to force major shifts in maritime connectivity for shipping companies and insurers. For China, the problem is particularly acute because it imports large quantities of crude oil, natural gas, minerals, agricultural goods, and industrial inputs, while exporting manufactured goods to Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and beyond. Given that all of this is mainly done by sea, China has an incentive to strengthen alternative corridors across Eurasia. These alternatives may not replace maritime shipping, but they can serve as complementary access.

Russia’s role in this regard has grown in China’s energy calculus. Russia remained a major crude supplier to China in 2025, and Russian oil flows have been strengthened by the reorientation of Moscow’s export markets under sanctions. For Beijing, Russian energy offers a critical advantage: much of it can move through continental routes less exposed to instability. However, dependence on Russia carries its own set of risks. Moscow remains a heavily sanctioned and geopolitically risky partner. China does not want to shift its dependence on maritime routes to overdependence on Russia. For Beijing, a key foreign policy driver is to avoid dependence on any single commercial corridor. Diversification lies at the heart of China’s approach to trade relations, meaning Beijing regards Russia as only one of several suppliers.

This brings us to Central Asia, which offers the shortest link connecting western China to energy resources, transport corridors, and emerging markets by avoiding U.S.-dominated maritime routes and the geopolitically unstable north Eurasian corridor. The region also borders Xinjiang, giving China direct overland access to Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan. Over the past decade, China has actively invested in roads, railways, pipelines, dry ports, logistics centers, and trade infrastructure across Central Asia. This is no longer only about symbolic Belt and Road connectivity. It is about building a land-based economic system that can mitigate China’s exposure to maritime shocks.

The scale of China-Central Asia trade demonstrates the change. China’s trade in goods with the five Central Asian states reached $106.3 billion in 2025. Kazakhstan is the most important node because it has the largest economy in Central Asia. ChinaKazakhstan trade reached record levels in 2025, and the two countries have deepened cooperation in energy, infrastructure, manufacturing, and transport.

Kazakhstan’s importance also lies in geography as the country sits between China and the Caspian Sea, and between Russia and Central Asia. For China, Kazakhstan is both a market and a corridor. It gives Beijing access to the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route, better known as the Middle Corridor, which connects China to Europe through Kazakhstan, the Caspian Sea, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and onward to Turkey and the wider Black Sea region. This route has gained importance since 2022 because the northern route through Russia has become politically sensitive for European companies and because the southern route through Iran remains vulnerable to sanctions and conflict. The Middle Corridor is therefore attractive because it bypasses Russia and Iran, and offers China a route to Europe that does not depend on maritime chokepoints. It also strengthens the geopolitical relevance of the South Caucasus and Central Asia. This is one of the reasons that China has begun to expand its diplomatic engagement with all three South Caucasus states in recent years.

Yet the Middle Corridor’s promise should not be exaggerated. It is not a full alternative to maritime shipping. It is multimodal, requiring rail, sea ferry across the Caspian Sea, port handling, customs coordination, rail transfer, onward movement via the Black or Mediterranean Sea, and multiple border crossings. Each transfer point creates friction. Capacity remains limited compared with maritime routes and the northern rail corridor through Russia. In 2025, around 77,000 TEUs reportedly moved along the Trans-Caspian route, with a target to raise that number to 300,000 TEUs by 2029. The corridor is growing, but it nevertheless remains small relative to the scale of China-Europe trade.

The Middle Corridor’s value is not primarily volume, but the fact that it provides connectivity options. It gives China, Central Asian states, South Caucasus countries, Turkey, and Europe a route that can expand in times of crisis. It also encourages infrastructure investment that may gradually reduce bottlenecks. The more efficient the corridor becomes, the more geopolitical value it gains. Even if it handles only a fraction of total China-Europe trade, it can shape bargaining positions. For Europe, it reduces overdependence on Russia-linked routes. For Central Asia, it reduces dependence on Russian transit. For the South Caucasus, it increases strategic relevance. For China, it provides an additional westward pathway that is not controlled by any single rival power.

Energy is the second major incentive behind China’s turn to overland routes. Central Asia is an energy supplier, and Turkmenistan is particularly important because it is one of China’s major gas suppliers.

The Central Asia-China gas pipeline system already links Turkmen gas to Chinese consumers through Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. Recent China-Turkmenistan energy agreements point toward further expansion of this cooperation. For instance, in April 2026, China and Turkmenistan signed an agreement on the fourth phase of the Galkynysh gas field, under which the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) will build facilities capable of processing an additional 10 bcm of gas annually and drill new wells. Proposed expansion through Line D, though delayed for years, would further deepen the region’s role in China’s energy diversification. If completed, it would add another route through Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan, expanding both capacity and geopolitical interdependence.

The Gulf Dimension

Still, Central Asia cannot replace the Gulf countries as a key oil provider, highlighting the limits of China’s continental strategy. China’s economy largely depends on oil volumes that pipelines from Russia and Central Asia cannot fully cover. Moreover, the Gulf producers remain essential because they offer scale, liquidity, and flexible tanker-based supply. Even in times of crisis, China cannot simply pivot away from the Gulf region. Beijing can certainly reduce purchases temporarily, draw down stockpiles, buy more from Russia, or diversify through Africa and the Americas, but the Gulf countries’ importance remains long-term in nature. Beijing’s strategy, therefore, can be characterized as risk management. Indeed, since the war in Iran and the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz began, China has sharply reduced crude imports, relying more heavily on stockpiles and cutting refinery activity. But this approach only alleviates immediate pressure. Stockpiles will need replenishment, which, for the foreseeable future, can only be achieved through active oil supplies from the Gulf countries.

This reality also means that China will continue to pursue close relations with the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. The latter will remain a critical partner for Beijing when it comes to investments in Gulf countries’ physical infrastructure and AI development. But more importantly, the GCC will continue to regard China as a powerful instrument in its multi-alignment strategy, which, at its core, is about avoiding exclusive dependence on the United States or other major actors. The war in Iran has further accentuated the need for the GCC countries to double down on this strategic thinking. China is unlikely to enter the Middle East in a military capacity, especially not in the Gulf region. But the Beijing factor is an increasingly useful foreign policy tool for the GCC countries to further entrench their multivector approach.

Conclusion

China’s turn to overland routes should not be read as a complete replacement of its massive maritime trade. Rather, Beijing’s approach is all about diversification because chokepoints, once treated as relatively stable routes and symbols of globalization, can quickly become instruments of coercion by the countries that control them or any external powers possessing outsized military potential. The chokepoints, therefore, serve as geopolitical assets, a reality that is pushing China to expand its cooperation across the Eurasian landmass. Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey, and the wider Central Asian region are all becoming part of China’s changing calculus. At the same time, there are clear limits to how far China can go in this direction. The country will continue to rely on maritime trade because no continental system can match the scale of maritime commerce. But it will no longer treat maritime routes as sufficiently secure on their own. The more unstable the Middle East becomes, the more valuable Central Asia and the South Caucasus will be in Beijing’s strategic imagination. The result is the emergence of a new phase in Eurasian geopolitics: the rise of overland trade routes as opposed to the still-attractive maritime connectivity. This dynamic is not unprecedented. In ancient and medieval periods, continental and maritime roots coexisted in a state of competition and complementarity. Even after the Age of Discovery (15th -17th centuries), when European naval powers came to dominate global commerce, overland trade across Eurasia persisted, adapting to geopolitical shifts, rather than disappearing.

Emil Avdaliani is a professor of international relations at the European University in Tbilisi, Georgia, a scholar of Silk Roads and a non-resident fellow with the Gulf Research Center.