While much has been made in recent years of Africa “emerging” strongly, there is another continental area – Eurasia, and Central Asia especially – whose enormous economic potential remains relatively untapped. As it has moved into the political arena of China’s Belt and Road Initiative and the strategic competition between East and West, Eurasia has had something of a spotlight turned upon it. But relative ignorance still prevails concerning this mega continent’s game-changing potential. If it can get its political and economic act together like Africa is beginning to do, Eurasia, as a united continent of some 90 countries and 5 billion people, has the physical and human resources to become a world beater. It would alter the balance of power between the United States and others. And a China fully integrated (at least logistically) with Europe would see its geopolitical position become more balanced. Much of the world would meanwhile become less vulnerable to maritime choke points . Because of the vast size of this biggest land mass in the world, the landlocked nature of many of its constituent countries and its uneven population distribution, Eurasia lacks the markets and transport infrastructure at present to become a viable single entity. There is a chicken and egg argument over which comes first – the transport, energy and communications infrastructure needed to support growth or the economic activity and demand needed to justify infrastructure investment. Asia is proving more pragmatic than Western nations on this point. Market economies and financial systems have assumed in recent decades that demand must come first to justify investment, and consequently their infrastructure has stagnated. China, among others, saw things the other way round and their infrastructure and economies have thrived. The latest Eurasian initiative to claim attention in this regard is the Trans-Caspian Corridor which stretches from China through Central Asian countries along the Caspian Sea to Europe. Sections of the corridor already exist and the logic for expanding and upgrading it is strong. As Richard Pomfret of the University of Adelaide says, the corridor is an “emerging route for transporting people and goods from East Asia and Central Asia to the Middle East and Europe”. It runs from Asia to the east coast of the Caspian Sea across the Caspian and on to Turkey and Europe. Over the past 10 years, he notes, there has been a major improvement in central European infrastructure and in transport from Central Asia to East Asia and Europe. Almost all of this has gone from China across Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus and Poland to Europe. The Trans-Caspian Corridor has the potential to better serve routes going to Southeast Europe, Turkey and the Middle East. But where does the corridor fit into China’s belt and road scheme or rival schemes backed in recent years by the US, Japan, India and others? In the West’s infrastructure battle with China, politics trumps reality There is no Eurasia-wide grand design for the development of the continent. The nearest approach on the infrastructural and logistical side is China’s Belt and Road Initiative, although it has no institutional structure and the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank maintains an arm’s length relationship. Much of the work on the Trans-Caspian Corridor has been done by the Central Asia Regional Economic Cooperation (Carec) group whose members include Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, China, Georgia, Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Mongolia, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, with the Asian Development Bank acting as secretariat. This all sounds highly fragmented, leading to assumptions that Eurasia may never get its act together. However, external forces – not least the so-called Indo-Pacific alliance led by the US and the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue – are pushing it in that direction. At least some of these countries appear to be united more by their opposition to China’s emergence than by other common interests. But the logic of shared economic interests among Carec countries and others coming under the bigger umbrella of the Belt and Road Initiative cannot be denied. Central Asian nations are looking beyond their borders, trading with one another and focusing on exporting mineral and primary products to the world while also diversifying their economies. “Connectivity” in terms of transport and communications links is all important to them. This is not the only thing driving towards Eurasian integration. German car companies have commissioned block trains to carry components via the Trans-Siberian Railway to joint venture assembly operations in China and similar services have been provided for Daewoo. Major electronics firms (Foxconn, HP, Acer and others) have meanwhile built assembly facilities for laptops, printers and other electronic equipment in Chongqing, which are now shipped via rail from China to Europe. The United States of Eurasia may one day replace the USA as number one. Anthony Rowley is a veteran journalist specialising in Asian economic and financial affairs