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Large-scale transport systems project expansive geographical reach via far-reaching connectivity and spillovers. This phenomenon, however, is understudied for its impact on economic and spatial relations across geographic scales and economic domains and the mechanism carrying and transmitting that impact. Despite its short existence, the China–Europe Freight Train (CEFT) has already created a long geographical reach and major impact on the transport landscape spanning China, Central Asia, and Europe. This paper argues that a new logistics state in China at the local level is driving and sustaining the CEFT from below relative to the national government and market forces. Using the ancient city of Xi'an as a characteristic embodiment of a logistics state, this paper demonstrates how the logistics state-driven CEFT has multiplied routes and redirected trade flows between China and Europe, reorganized inter-city and cross-border production and supply chains from China to Europe, stimulated a new geography of globally oriented and nationally rebalanced local consumption in China, and fueled major new development in an ancient and economically lagging city. The paper concludes on critical complications and implications from the Chinese local logistics state for the CEFT's sustainability and future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) and China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) intersect and overlap in Central Asia at the heart of Eurasia. Whereas the literature has commonly focused on the economic aspects of these major regional policy initiatives, efforts to create a common Eurasian higher education space through these regionalisms have barely been studied. In response, this paper compares the development of Russian and Chinese led visions for Eurasian higher education regionalism in Central Asia and the extent to which these constructions overlap. The paper also sheds lights on the perspectives of Central Asian states by investigating how these countries are approaching these efforts to construct a Eurasian higher education region. The conceptual framework brings together higher education regionalism with overlapping regionalism and takes a policy-oriented methodological approach. The paper introduces the new term of "points of correspondence" based on language used in both Russian and Chinese policy discourse to explain how constructions of a Eurasian higher education region can overlap without duplicating or flowing into each other. "Points of correspondence" emphasizes neither competition nor collaboration but rather the ongoing pursuit to find ideas and policy tools that best fit one another. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes Mongolia's attempts at balancing its relations with China and Russia and the dilemmas it faces as China's influence grows in the wake of its "Belt and Road Initiative". Mongolia has embraced China's connectivity projects and a new form of trilateralism, even though Mongolia was not included in the initial five economic corridors proposed by Xi Jinping in 2013. Mongolian concerns over geo-strategic isolation led to a renewed effort to embrace its two big neighbors, resulting in the proposal of the trilateral "Economic Corridor" in 2016, followed by further trilateral summits. The paper thus seeks to answer the puzzle how Mongolia's self-perception as a geopolitical bridgehead state can be reconciled with the partially diverging interests of its two neighbors. Drawing on interviews with Mongolian experts and officials as well as qualitative document analysis, the paper adds empirical nuance to the debate about Sino-Russian interaction in Eurasia, but also to the understudied dimension of the agency of the "in-between countries" in their shared neighborhood. It argues that the spectrum ranging from competition to accommodation between China and Russia is further complicated by the choices and policy responses of actors "in between", like Mongolia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]