Against the prevailing narrative of the The Belt and Road as a top-down strategy to spread China’s geopolitical influence, there is the BRI’s impact through its first decade as emanating «from the middle out and bottom up» via transport-enabled corridors traversing a large number of regions within and across national territories.

The analysis of global trends in the development of the principal logistics directions and routes for delivery of сargoes between continents and countries shows that over the past ten years, the first-level carriers and operators have intensified the struggle for transit container cargo flows, and a number of countries are taking important, forward-looking steps to increase the attractiveness of container shipping.