Dear reader,
When Chinese President Xi Jinping launched the Belt and Road Initiative in 2013 to revive land and maritime links between China and the rest of the world, growth for an old frontier town came slowly, at first.
Khorgos, in Xinjiang and just across the border from Kazakhstan, is home to fewer than 100,000 people. But it lies on a major node of the China-Europe Railway Express, with trains that connect factories in China to markets in Central Asia, Russia and beyond.
There were just 50,000 rides over the first 11 years of its freight service. But it took less than three years to hit the next 50,000 rides.
Now, in 2026, with the Iran war disrupting sea routes and significantly hiking shipping costs, Khorgos has found itself playing a critical role in facilitating the overland transportation of Chinese EVs, household appliances and whatever else consumers in Europe are ordering on Temu and other e-commerce platforms.
My colleagues Yew Lun Tian and Ingrid Yu travelled to Khorgos, a five-hour flight from Beijing, to document the changes.
A major border town like Khorgos is also an intriguing case study for how this diverse society – a mix of Han Chinese, Kazakhs, Uyghurs and Hui – far from the central government in Beijing is organising itself.
Just the week before her trip, a Kazakh court had jailed 11 China-born Kazakhs for protesting at the border and “inciting racial strife against the Chinese people”.
Lun Tian tells me: “Having spent almost a decade based in Beijing, I’ve long been fascinated by the idea of going to China’s border regions – the country’s extremities – to see how differently life is organised there from the capital, in a system that places an almost suffocating emphasis on unity and central control.”
“I was also keen to observe how people on both sides actually interact on the ground, away from capital politics and diplomatic niceties. Khorgos, sitting on China’s far western edge, felt as far horizontally from Beijing as one could get.”
While on the ground, our correspondents had to grapple with surveillance by local authorities, preventing long conversations with residents. But read the feature for a flavour of the dynamics in Khorgos, and also about the hourly Pavlovian signal from the town’s clock tower.
As usual, I leave you with a selection of our correspondents’ articles and podcasts.
Johor is promoting a state identity. Not everyone feels the same about it
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India was meant to win under Trump 2.0. So what happened?
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The BJP looks set to govern West Bengal and a movie star's party wins big in Tamil Nadu.
Ride-hailing drivers welcome Prabowo’s cap on platform commissions
Indonesia’s new rules cap the commission taken at 8% of drivers’ earnings, down from 20%.
Unease in Europe over Trump’s threat to pull more US troops out of Germany
It comes after Trump had ordered the Pentagon to withdraw around 5,000 US service personnel from Germany.
Can America’s dangerous drift to political violence be stopped?
The most troubling aspect of this political violence is the moral sanction it apparently enjoys on the fringe.
Australia’s uncrewed planes, subs and drones could appeal to Asian navies: Analysts
Growing US-South Korea tensions spill over into intelligence, business fronts
A series of speed bumps have unsettled the alliance since Mr Trump’s return to office in January 2025.
New Zealand PM Luxon committed to supplying food to Singapore
Both nations agreed to maintain supply chain resilience and ensure the flow of essential goods.
Consumers in China on alert over hard-to-detect fake gold
Gold mixed with rhenium has emerged in the retail market as the prices of the safe-haven asset hit record highs.
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