Łódź’s benefits from the One Belt One Road initiative

ABSTRACT

The paper provides an overview of China’s relations with Poland in the context of the New Silk Road (NSR) as well as Łódź’s benefits form the One Belt One Road (OBOR). China has rapidly expanded the extent of its interactions with Poland since 2013 when it decided that the railway network should go through the shortest land connection of China to Western Europe. From the very beginning, Łódź was one of the most important points on the planned route. The article presents the key features of the city, while the case of the Łódź–Chengdu rail connection offers an insight into the region’s benefits from the NSR. The article concludes that although there have been positive changes in the economic situation of the Łódź region so far, there are still many areas of the Sino-Polish cooperation that seem crucial for the future of the OBOR.

KEYWORDS:

• Sino-Polish relations
• OBOR
• New Silk Road
• Łódź

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Aleksandra Bartosiewicz http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6464-9277

Paulina Szterlik http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1792-4691

Notes

1 The New Amber Route (NAR) is a network of high-speed railways that would connect Southern Europe with the North starting from Piraeus and connecting three seas: the Adriatic Sea, the Black Sea and the Baltic Sea.