Lukashenko Has Let China Down Big Time
- 18.09.2025, 13:30
The western provinces of the PRC have been hit particularly hard.
The closure of the Polish-Belarusian border, initially presented as a temporary measure for the duration of the Zapad-2025 exercise, has turned into a crisis on an international scale. Warsaw announced that it would not open the crossings "until a full guarantee of security". This effectively halted a key rail corridor between China and the EU, writes Politico.
The route through Belarus provided about 90% of rail freight traffic from China to the EU and a turnover of 25 billion euros a year. In 2024, traffic grew by 10.6% and the value of freight by almost 85% to €25.07 billion. The corridor's share of EU-China trade climbed to 3.7%, up from 2.1% a year earlier. For online retail giants like Temu and Shein, it was a vital delivery channel.
Now it's all up. According to the industry, the border blockage has hit even critical supplies - medicines and groceries. Meanwhile, about ten thousand Belarusian drivers employed by Polish transportation companies are stuck "between the worlds": they can't work in Poland and can't return home.
There are alternatives, but they are inconvenient. Carriers have already mastered redirecting cargo through Lithuania or Latvia, but this option increases delivery times and costs. According to logisticians' estimates, the delivery of a container by rail from China to Europe costs an average of 7-8 thousand dollars, and the sea route, although twice as cheap, but slower by two to three weeks. Major European ports - Rotterdam with an annual cargo turnover of 450 million tons and Hamburg with about 110 million tons - may benefit from the situation.
There is also a political component to the logistical drama. Poland has said that "the logic of security outweighed the logic of trade," linking it to the recent incursion of Russian drones into its airspace. Meanwhile, China is demanding that the route to the West be uninterrupted, calling the rail corridor a "flagship project of cooperation" with both Poland and the EU.
The US, on the other hand, is rather pleased with the situation: instead of additional duties against Beijing, which Washington unsuccessfully sought from the EU, the land corridor has been effectively paralyzed, according to Peter Krawczyk, former head of Poland's Foreign Intelligence Service.
Europe remains silent, but, as the expert notes, many EU capitals and the European Commission itself are not in a hurry to object to blocking the Polish-Belarusian border, because the revitalization of sea routes is beneficial to the EU countries themselves.
According to economists, a particularly heavy blow will be dealt to the western provinces of China, which have no access to the sea. But on the scale of China as a whole, we are talking about only a few percent of exports, which is not so critical.
In the meantime, business in Europe is forced to stay in limbo.
"The complete closure of the border is a problem not only for logistics, but for the entire economy. The government says it is monitoring the situation and will open the crossings when it is safe to do so. But in fact we know nothing," emphasizes Arthur Kalisiak from the association Transport & Logistics Poland.