FORECASTING BILATERAL TRADE GROWTH SCENARIOS UNDER DIFFERENT TRANSPORT INFRASTRUCTURE INVESTMENT MODELS. THE CASE OF THE CHINA – KAZAKHSTAN – CENTRAL ASIA TRADE AND TRANSPORT CORRIDOR

Abstract

This article develops a forecast of bilateral trade growth scenarios between China and the countries of Central Asia, with particular attention to Kazakhstan, conditional on the investment model applied to three parallel transport corridors — the Northern Corridor (via Russia), the Middle Corridor (the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route, TITR), and the emerging China–Kyrgyzstan–Uzbekistan (CKU) railway. Drawing on empirical data from Chinese customs statistics, Kazakhstan's Association of Financiers (AFK), the World Bank, KTZ (Kazakhstan Railways), and industry materials from logistics operators — including corporate materials of Shandong Gaosu Qilu-hao Investment Development Co., Ltd. on the operation of Eurasian container trains — the article constructs a scenario-forecasting methodology built on five key variables: global commodity price dynamics, the completion timeline of the CKU railway, the geopolitical resilience of the Northern Corridor, the institutional capacity of transit states to capture transit rents, and the pace of renminbi internationalization. Three trade-growth scenarios to 2030 are developed — a baseline scenario, an accelerated Middle Corridor scenario, and a geopolitical-escalation scenario — with quantitative estimates of trade volume and cargo-flow structure under each. The analysis shows that the transition from a "corridor economy" to a "connected economy" is determined less by the sheer volume of transport investment than by the institutional capacity of transit states to convert transit flows into captured value added