China’s head-start in building roads, railways and pipelines
across Central Asia creates an opportunity for the West — and the region
itself. China has paved the way to finally open up landlocked Central Asia, and
the West should build on its success, creating a new, oil-fueled, East-West
Silk Road, writes Parag Khanna in the New York Times.

Rather than think of China’s moves into Central Asia — and into
Africa — as a suspicious form of neocolonialism, Western countries should focus
on how to use Chinese-built roads and railways to make their own floundering
regional strategy a success. This means cooperation rather than competition,
and it can happen through heavy infrastructure investment, building new lines
on the map that transcend arbitrary borders and bring real economic value.

Tapping resources that local governments don’t have the
wherewithal to extract and managing them well is a win-win for all sides.
That’s what has happened in Mongolia for decades, leading to a mineral export
bonanza and rapid economic growth. But Mongolia has also tapped Western
knowledge, copying the model of Norway to set up a National Development Fund to
distribute shares of mineral profits to the people, and hiring the prominent
Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto, an expert on property rights and
small-scale development. Mongolia’s place on the new Silk Road is assured.