Khorgos: The New Silk Road's Central Station Comes To Life

The broader SEZ

Surrounding the Khorgos Gateway dry port is the broader Khorgos Eastern Gate SEZ -- an absolutely massive area that has been cleared and prepped for large-scale manufacturing and warehousing operations. This area officially commenced operations in December 2016. China’s Jiangsu province has signed an MOU with the Kazakhstan government to invest $600 million into this SEZ, the details of which are currently being worked out.

Nurkent

During my previous visits to Khorgos I was told about the new city for 30,000 workers and their families that would soon rise up from the barren dirt out in the distance. At that time, this “new city” amounted to a string of three or four sad shacks that some customs officials were apparently living in. Today, that empty space is a place called Nurkent, and is occupied by row upon row of various styles of housing, with two large yellow apartment complexes rising in the background. Two thousand people now live there full time; there are shops; there is a school.

Horgos

While on the Chinese side of the border is the new city of Horgos. This is a new urban undertaking that began in 2014 with the ambition of building a 200,000-person-city that could serve as a manufacturing, shipping, and commercial epicenter at China's primary New Silk Road gateway. The place is a national-level project, being developed by Beijing directly, which means that funding and political will are no obstacles. Horgos is now growing fast, with seas of new high-rises sprouting up from the sand dunes as a small remote village is turned into a city by all-out fiat. The industrial zone is starting to open, bringing in high-tech manufacturing operations from booming eastern cities like Shenzhen. Horgos now has a skyline -- something that's never existed in this region before -- which can now be seen towering above the China / Kazakhstan ICBC “Khorgos” free trade zone.

The free trade zone

The ICBC "Khorgos" cross-border free trade zone itself is turning a corner. Although it’s hardly five years old and is still at an early point in its development, its trajectory has not always been very smooth. Political and economic difficulties plagued the Kazakhstan side, while the Chinese side kind of wallowed as a mere wholesale market for generic utilitarian goods. But the place is now starting to show slight glimmers of becoming the multi-faceted tourist destination it was initially positioned to be. Not only are three more duty free shopping centers being built on the Chinese side, but more hotels and tourists attractions are rising up as well — such as a prominently positioned museum and a 300-meter-tall observation tower. While the Kazakhstan side of this free trade zone had nothing but a makeshift tent and a burning pile of garbage during my last visit in May of 2015, it now has an open and functioning shopping center, an operating distribution hub, and many construction projects for hotels and more trade centers that are currently in progress.

I must admit that the Khorgos vision is a little easier to see now. Really, all you need to do now is go there and look. It will be right in front of you, no imagination required.