The new Silk Road has no camels, no caravans, no adventurers, traders, ne’r do wells nor princesses. The cargo of the new Silk Road, though, is amongst the most precious in the world: natural gas. The leadership of China and Kahzahkstan recently opened the Kazakhstan portion of the 7,000km (4,300 miles) pipeline, which starts at a gas field in Turkmenistan and will end in Xinjiang when completed in 2013. The route the pipeline takes helps make some Central Asian countries more independent from Russia’s resource whims.

Russia can be none to happy that former Soviet territories are gravitating into Chinese orbit. If only, though, those same Central Asian countries took a look at their Muslim neighbor to the east, already enmeshed in China’s sphere of influence, they’d get some idea of the true cost such intimacy.

Further reading: BBC