In September 2025, Poland made a decision that reverberated far beyond its borders with immediate consequences for global trade. Citing security concerns following the Zapad-2025 military exercises and Russian drone incursions, Warsaw closed all crossing points with Belarus, effectively severing one of the most important arteries in the China-Europe trade network.1
The closure stranded over 130 freight trains in Belarus and disrupted a rail corridor carrying approximately €25 billion in annual trade between China and the European Union.2
This seemingly regional action illuminates a profound geopolitical reality: China’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative, designed to create new trade routes linking Asia with Europe, remains vulnerable to political decisions made by countries through which these routes must pass.
More significantly, the closure reveals the deepening contradictions China faces as it attempts to maintain its strategic partnership with Russia while pursuing vital economic interests with the West. As Trump-era tariffs and potential European tariffs threaten China’s already weakening economy, Beijing finds itself caught between incompatible imperatives, a dilemma that the Poland-Belarus border closure brings into sharp relief.
The Strategic Importance of the China-Europe Railway Express
Poland’s decision is best understood within the wider context of the China-Europe Railway Express, a transformative link in modern Sino-European commerce. The railway traverses Belarus en route to Poland, acting as the principal conduit for rail-borne trade between China and the European Union; in fact, approximately 90% of all China-EU rail freight passes along this corridor. In 2024, cargo volumes on the route rose by 10.6% compared to the previous year, while the value of transported goods surged by an extraordinary 85%, reaching €25.07 billion. This “rail bridge” now facilitates about 3.7% of total EU-China trade, a sharp rise from 2.1% the year prior.
This dramatic expansion reflects evolving patterns in the movement of goods between the world’s two largest economies. The surge is predominantly attributed to rapid-growth cross-border e-commerce and the shipment of higher-value industrial products. For major Chinese e-commerce platforms—such as Temu and Shein—the railway has quickly become indispensable, allowing them to offer compressed delivery timelines without incurring air-freight costs. Typically, goods sent via the China-Europe Railway Express arrive within 15 days, which is more than a month faster than traditional sea routes. Although rail is marginally pricier than maritime transport, its speed and reliability have made it the preferred choice for many traders and manufacturers.3
The cargo composition reveals the route’s strategic importance. Public data shows that approximately 60% of loads comprise electronics, machinery, lithium batteries, and electric vehicles, precisely the categories where delivery predictability and speed matter most for maintaining competitiveness in European markets. As China seeks to boost trade with the EU and diversify away from the United States amid escalating trade tensions, this land route has become increasingly essential to Chinese commercial strategy.
The Immediate Impact of the Closure
When Poland announced the complete closure on September 12, 2025, the effects rippled through the logistics chain immediately. The shutdown paralyzed the main China-Europe railway hub at Małaszewicze, Poland’s primary border crossing with Belarus. According to reports from Chinese financial media outlet Yicai Global, more than 130 China-Europe freight trains became stuck at Brest in Belarus during the first week alone.4
The disruption extended far beyond simple delay. Freight forwarders scrambled to find alternatives, with Baltic carriers tripling rates for 40-foot high-cube containers to approximately $9,500, thereby exceeding peak levels seen during the COVID-19 pandemic. The closure affected diverse shipments, including containers of European wine destined for China, electronics heading to European markets, and the myriad consumer goods that fuel the cross-border e-commerce boom.5
The alternatives available to shippers highlighted the route’s unique value proposition.
• Companies could attempt rerouting via other rail lines that bypass Poland and Belarus, though with severely limited capacity.
• They could shift to sea freight, which requires detouring around Africa’s Cape of Good Hope and significantly lengthens transit times.
• Or they could resort to expensive air freight for time-sensitive goods.
None of these options replicated the speed, cost-effectiveness, and capacity of the primary rail corridor through Belarus and Poland.
The Security Rationale: Russia, Belarus, and Hybrid Warfare
Poland’s decision to close the border did not emerge from a vacuum. The closure followed a calculated pattern of Russian and Belarusian actions designed to test and probe NATO’s eastern flank. On September 9, 2025, more than 20 unmanned aerial vehicles from Belarus and Russia entered Polish airspace. Moscow and Minsk denied hostile intent, but Warsaw described the flights as clear provocations and violations of its sovereignty.
Polish Interior Minister Marcin Kierwiński stated that the crossings would reopen only when conditions were safe, adding that Polish border guard forces had recorded increased attempts by Belarusian and Russian drones to enter Polish airspace.
The drone incursions occurred in conjunction with Zapad-2025, the quadrennial military exercises conducted by Belarusian and Russian forces near the border with Poland and Lithuania. These large-scale exercises, which have historically served as vehicles for Russian power projection and intimidation, created an environment of heightened tension along NATO’s eastern frontier.
For Poland, which has borne the brunt of Russian hybrid warfare tactics in recent years, the combination of military exercises and airspace violations crossed a threshold that demanded response.
This was not Poland’s first confrontation with Belarus-enabled hybrid warfare. The country has severely restricted road traffic with Belarus since Minsk launched a campaign of instrumentalized migration in the summer of 2021, an event that prompted Warsaw to install high-tech steel fences, deploy the army, and create a no-go buffer zone along the border.
That earlier episode which occurred during my visit to Poland in the Fall 202, saw Belarus deliberately channeling migrants toward Polish borders to create pressure and instability, demonstrated the Lukashenko regime’s willingness to weaponize virtually any available leverage against EU member states.
While closely monitoring the economic ramifications of Poland’s border closure with Belarus, the European Commission avoided any implication of disapproval towards Warsaw’s decision. “This is a security issue,” said Olof Gill, the Commission’s deputy chief spokesperson, reiterating Poland’s rationale. “There is a trade impact when a border is shut down along which trade routes flow. We are in contact with the Polish authorities to examine all facets of the matter. Any trade-related difficulties that result from the security environment are occurring due to Russia’s brutal, illegal, and unjustified war”6
China’s Futile Diplomatic Efforts
China’s response to the closure revealed the limits of its influence in European capitals when security concerns are at stake. When Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi met with Polish Deputy Prime Minister Radosław Sikorski in Warsaw on September 16, 2025, securing the reopening of the border crossing appears to have been high on Beijing’s agenda. The meeting failed to produce the desired result.
China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian had earlier emphasized the importance of the route from Beijing’s perspective: “The China-Europe Railway Express is a flagship project of China-Poland and China-EU cooperation. The project benefits both sides. We hope Poland will take effective measures to ensure the safe and smooth operation of the Express and the stability of international industrial and supply chains.”7 Yet these appeals to mutual economic benefit carried little weight against Poland’s security imperatives.
The official Chinese read-out of the Wang-Sikorski meeting, released by Beijing, did not mention the border closure at all, instead speaking in broad terms about “the sustainable development of bilateral trade” between Poland and China. This diplomatic silence spoke volumes about China’s inability to leverage its economic relationship with Poland to override Warsaw’s security calculus. Poland was not willing to compromise its national security to facilitate Chinese commercial interests, regardless of the economic costs.
Poland’s closure of its border with Belarus in September 2025 prompted both Chinese and Belarusian leaders to label the move an “unfriendly step” against China; however, their protests gained little traction in Europe. According to Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko, “I realize that this is most likely an unfriendly move by the Poles, a political one against the People’s Republic of China or perhaps [a move designed] to boost their image, as the Poles believe”8
The border, which had been closed since September 12 due to security concerns surrounding Russian-Belarusian military exercises, was ultimately reopened by Poland on September 25. During the announcement, Prime Minister Donald Tusk warned that should tensions escalate, Poland would not hesitate to close the border again, emphasizing Warsaw’s authority over the crucial transit route between China and European markets. As Polish officials made clear: control over access to European markets via this route resides with Poland and not China.9
The Belt and Road Initiative’s Structural Vulnerability
The border closure exposed fundamental weaknesses in China’s Belt and Road Initiative that go far beyond this single corridor. Since its announcement in 2013, the BRI has been portrayed as a transformative infrastructure project that would create new economic linkages across Eurasia, reducing China’s dependence on maritime trade routes while opening new markets for Chinese goods and services. The overland rail connections to Europe represented a flagship component of this vision.
China has made substantial investments in land transit infrastructure directed toward Europe, positioning Belarus as a critical gateway for entering European markets. In 2016, China established the Great Stone Industrial Park near Minsk specifically to serve as a production and logistics center for the European terminus of the rail link to Asia as part of the Belt and Road Initiative.10 Beijing subsequently enhanced existing railway systems with IT solutions and infrastructural upgrades that significantly reduced customs processing times by as much as 70%, shifting from days to mere hours. These developments underscore China’s strategic ambition to expand trade with Europe by diversifying its transport corridors and investing in advanced logistics capabilities.11
However, infrastructure investments alone cannot guarantee the political stability and cooperative relationships necessary for trade to flow smoothly. The BRI’s Eurasian land bridge depends fundamentally on stable transit through territories China does not control. Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, and Belarus’s role as Russia’s proxy state, has rendered this assumption obsolete.
The geographic reality is stark: any overland route from China to Europe must transit through either Russia or Central Asian countries that themselves depend on Russian cooperation. The northern route through Russia and Belarus offers the most direct path and the best infrastructure, which explains why it carries 90% of China-EU rail freight.
Alternative routes through the so-called “Middle Corridor which traverse Kazakhstan, the Caspian Sea, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Turkey exist but have significantly less capacity and face their own political complications.
This geographic constraint creates a structural vulnerability that China cannot engineer away. As long as Russia pursues policies that threaten European security, and as long as Belarus remains subordinate to Moscow, the primary overland trade corridor linking China to Europe will remain hostage to decisions made in Warsaw, Vilnius, and other capitals along NATO’s eastern frontier. China can build all the rail lines, logistics centers, and customs facilities it wants, but if Poland decides to close the border for security reasons, Chinese goods cannot reach European markets via this route.
China’s Russia Dilemma: Economic Interests Versus Strategic Alignment
The Poland-Belarus border closure crystallizes a deeper contradiction in Chinese grand strategy what might be called “China’s Russia dilemma.” Beijing faces fundamentally incompatible imperatives that the Ukraine war has brought into sharp focus.
On one hand, China has maintained what Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin described in February 2022 as a “no limits” partnership between their two countries. This strategic alignment serves multiple Chinese interests: it provides a powerful partner in challenging U.S. hegemony, offers diplomatic cover in international institutions, supplies essential energy resources, and creates a sense of authoritarian solidarity against perceived Western pressure.
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, this partnership has deepened considerably, with China-Russia trade reaching $240 billion in 2023, a 26.3% increase from the previous year and more than double the $107 billion recorded in 2018.
China’s support for Russia extends well beyond rhetorical solidarity. Beijing has supplied Moscow with industrial inputs crucial to sustaining the war effort, including microelectronics, military optics, drone and turbojet engines, armored vehicles, satellite technology, and materials like nitrocellulose.
These exports have flowed both directly through Chinese suppliers and via third countries, facilitating the reconstitution of Russia’s defense industrial base. While there is no publicly available evidence that Beijing is providing lethal arms to Russian forces, its goods exports are nonetheless materially enabling Moscow’s invasion.12
China has also undercut efforts to isolate Russia diplomatically, lending credence to Moscow’s narrative that portrays Russia as the victim of Western aggression and NATO expansion as the real driver of the war.This diplomatic support proves valuable to Russia as it faces near-universal condemnation from Western nations and many developing countries.13
China’s economic priorities are diverging from its strategic alignment with Russia, as the European Union and the United States now make up markets of much greater significance to China than Russia does. In 2024, total trade between China and the EU reached approximately €732 billion, dwarfing the scale of China-Russia trade, which saw a total of about $240 billion in 2024 and experienced notable declines in 2025. The massive size and diversity of EU and US markets solidify their importance for China’s long-term economic growth, far outweighing what Russia alone can provide.14
Moreover, European markets have become even more critical as Trump administration tariffs squeeze Chinese exports to the United States. Trump imposed a 10% tariff on Chinese goods on top of already existing tariffs, raising the average U.S. tariff rate on China from just below 20% to just below 30%. European nations are now contemplating their own tariffs on Chinese goods, particularly in sectors like electric vehicles where Chinese competition threatens European manufacturers.
China’s economic situation amplifies the stakes of this dilemma. The Chinese economy faces significant headwinds, including a property sector crisis, high youth unemployment, weak domestic consumption, and demographic challenges. In this context, maintaining robust export growth to developed markets becomes essential for economic stability. Losing reliable access to European markets or facing additional tariffs from Europe would compound China’s economic difficulties at precisely the wrong moment.
The Poland-Belarus border closure demonstrates how China’s strategic alignment with Russia can directly harm its economic interests. By supporting Russia’s war in Ukraine, China enables actions that trigger European security responses, responses that disrupt the very trade infrastructure China has invested billions of dollars to build. The more Russia threatens European security, the more European nations will take actions like Poland’s border closure, regardless of the economic costs to China.
The Asymmetric Dependence
A crucial aspect of the China-Russia relationship intensifies this dilemma: the partnership has become increasingly asymmetric, with Russia far more dependent on China than China is on Russia. This asymmetry has grown more pronounced since Western sanctions cut Russia off from many traditional markets and technology sources following the invasion of Ukraine.
As I have argued earlier, for Russia, China has become an economic lifeline to the point where they are now a junior partner in the relationship. But at the same time damaging Chinese economic interests as the Chinese leadership is working on economic recover.
This asymmetry means that Russia needs China far more than China needs Russia. Yet paradoxically, China finds itself constrained by this relationship. Having invested significant political capital in the “no limits” partnership, and having provided material support that enables Russia to continue its war, Beijing cannot easily distance itself from Moscow without suffering reputational costs and potentially destabilizing a relationship it values for strategic reasons.
The asymmetry also limits China’s ability to influence Russian behavior. While China might use its economic leverage to pressure Russia toward a negotiated settlement in Ukraine, Beijing has shown little willingness to do so.
Global Implications and the Future of Eurasian Connectivity
The Poland-Belarus border closure carries implications that extend well beyond the immediate disruption to rail freight. It signals a broader fragmentation of the Eurasian space that the Belt and Road Initiative was designed to integrate. The episode demonstrates that in an era of major power competition and regional conflict, infrastructure alone cannot overcome political divisions.
The closure challenges one of the core premises of the BRI: that enhanced connectivity and economic interdependence would naturally foster cooperation and stability. Instead, we see that political conflicts can rapidly sever even heavily utilized trade routes when security concerns arise. Geographic proximity and infrastructure investments do not prevent borders from closing when nations perceive threats to their sovereignty and security.
This reality should temper expectations about the BRI’s transformative potential. While the initiative has certainly expanded infrastructure across Eurasia and increased trade flows, it has not fundamentally altered the geopolitical dynamics that shape state behavior. When push comes to shove, nations prioritize security over commerce, and economic ties prove insufficient to override political imperatives.
The episode also highlights the different nature of maritime versus overland trade routes. Maritime shipping, while slower than rail, benefits from the relative freedom of the seas and the ability to reroute around trouble spots. Overland routes, by contrast, must pass through specific corridors controlled by specific states. This creates choke points where political decisions can halt trade entirely, as Poland demonstrated. While maritime trade can be disrupted by naval blockades or piracy, such disruptions generally affect only a portion of global shipping. The closure of a critical land corridor can shut down an entire route.
For Europe, the border closure reinforces the strategic value of maintaining control over access points to the continent. Poland’s ability to halt a major trade corridor demonstrates that EU member states on the eastern frontier possess leverage that can be exercised when security requires it. This may encourage European nations to think more carefully about dependencies on infrastructure that transits through or near adversarial states.
The timing of the Poland-Belarus border closure compounds China’s challenges. Beyond the immediate disruption to the rail corridor, China faces mounting pressure on multiple trade fronts simultaneously, a confluence of difficulties that threatens the export-led growth model that has served the country so well for decades.
The Trump administration’s tariffs on Chinese goods represent the most visible element of this pressure. The additional 10% tariff imposed on Chinese imports raises costs for Chinese exporters and makes their products less competitive in the crucial U.S. market. These tariffs build on earlier Trump-era measures that already significantly raised barriers to Chinese goods. While some Chinese companies have adapted by establishing production facilities in third countries or finding ways to reclassify products, the tariffs nonetheless constrain Chinese export growth to the United States.
Europe, historically a more welcoming market for Chinese exports, has grown increasingly wary of Chinese competition in strategic sectors. The European Union has launched investigations into Chinese subsidies for electric vehicles and is considering tariffs on Chinese EVs to protect European automakers. Beyond autos, European policymakers express growing concern about Chinese overcapacity in multiple manufacturing sectors dumping products into European markets at prices that undermine domestic producers.
These trade tensions occur against the backdrop of China’s domestic economic challenges. The property sector crisis, which has seen major developers default on obligations and property values decline in many cities, has destroyed household wealth and dampened consumer confidence. Local government debt problems constrain public investment. Youth unemployment remains stubbornly high despite official efforts to massage the statistics. Demographic decline due to low birth rates and an aging population creates long-term headwinds for growth.
In this environment, maintaining strong export performance becomes critical for overall economic stability. Exports generate employment, earn foreign exchange, and utilize manufacturing capacity that weak domestic demand cannot absorb. Any disruption to major export routes such as the Poland-Belarus rail corridor therefore carries outsized significance for China’s economic managers.
The Poland-Belarus situation shows that China cannot take reliable market access for granted, even when it has invested heavily in infrastructure to facilitate trade. Political developments beyond China’s control can suddenly compromise routes and markets that seemed secure. This unpredictability complicates economic planning and highlights the risks of depending on infrastructure that transits through geopolitically contested regions.
Conclusion: The Fragility of Connectivity in an Age of Competition
The closure of the Poland-Belarus border in September 2025 will likely prove a relatively brief disruption in the long arc of China-Europe trade. The border eventually reopened, freight trains resumed movement, and the trade flows that make this corridor economically important will continue. Yet the episode’s significance extends far beyond its immediate impact on logistics and delivery schedules.
The closure exposed fundamental vulnerabilities in China’s Belt and Road Initiative that no amount of infrastructure investment can overcome. It demonstrated that overland trade routes depending on transit through geopolitically contested territories remain hostage to political decisions beyond China’s control. It showed that economic interdependence does not prevent nations from taking actions that disrupt trade when security concerns arise. And it revealed the limited leverage China possesses in European capitals when its commercial interests conflict with European security imperatives.
Most significantly, the border closure illuminated the deepening contradictions China faces as it attempts to maintain a strategic partnership with Russia while pursuing vital economic interests with the West. China’s support for Russia enables actions like the invasion of Ukraine that trigger European security responses. These responses, in turn, disrupt the very trade infrastructure China has built to access European markets. The more Russia threatens European security, the more vulnerable China’s trade routes through Russia and Belarus become.
This dilemma will likely intensify rather than resolve. Russia shows no signs of abandoning its aggressive posture toward Ukraine and NATO. European nations, having witnessed Russian aggression and hybrid warfare tactics, will remain vigilant about security threats from the east. Poland and other frontline states will not hesitate to close borders again if they perceive threats to their security, regardless of the economic costs to China.
China thus faces an uncomfortable reality: its ambitious plans for Eurasian connectivity collide with the hard facts of geopolitical competition. The Belt and Road Initiative envisioned a more integrated Eurasia where trade would flow smoothly across borders, facilitated by Chinese-built infrastructure. Instead, China confronts a fragmenting Eurasia where political conflicts repeatedly disrupt the connectivity it seeks to create.
The Poland-Belarus episode offers a case study in the limits of connectivity as a geopolitical strategy. Infrastructure matters, but geography matters more. Economic ties constrain behavior, but political imperatives override commercial interests when security is at stake. And partnerships built on shared grievances against the United States cannot paper over the fundamental contradictions between supporting Russian aggression and maintaining access to Western markets.
As China’s economy faces mounting headwinds and its trade relationships with developed markets grow more fraught, the vulnerability of its overland trade routes takes on greater significance. The Belt and Road Initiative was supposed to reduce China’s dependence on maritime routes and diversify its market access. Instead, it has created new dependencies on transit countries whose political decisions can rapidly compromise Chinese commercial interests.
The fragility of the BRI’s rail network through Belarus and Poland is not an anomaly, rather it is a feature of any strategy that depends on overland connectivity through geopolitically contested space. Until China resolves the contradiction between its support for Russia and its need for stable access to European markets, this vulnerability will persist. And as long as Russia continues its aggressive policies toward Ukraine and Europe, nations like Poland will retain both the capability and the willingness to close borders when security requires it, regardless of the disruption to Chinese trade.
The Ukraine war has thus created an unexpected dimension of strategic pressure on China. Beijing must choose between maintaining its partnership with Moscow and ensuring stable access to markets essential for its economic health. The Poland-Belarus border closure demonstrated the costs of choosing the former.
2. https://asiatimes.com/2025/09/poland-border-closure-choking-china-eu-rail-trade/
3. https://market-insights.upply.com/en/china-eu-rail-freight-on-the-rise-again-in-2024; https://www.searates.com/blog/post/eurasian-railway-corridor-overview-of-2024-trends-in-rail-freight-from-china-to-europe; https://www.politico.eu/article/poland-belarus-border-closure-eu-china-rail-trade-russia-zapad/
4. https://table.media/en/china/feature/border-closure-poland-blocks-chinas-most-important-rail-route
6. https://www.kyivpost.com/post/60431
7. https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/xw/fyrbt/202509/t20250912_11707735.html
10. https://eng.yidaiyilu.gov.cn/p/287126.html
11. https://ceias.eu/a-gateway-or-a-dead-end-belarus-and-chinas-belt-and-road-initiative/
13. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-china-russia-relationship-and-threats-to-vital-us-interests/
14. https://policy.trade.ec.europa.eu/eu-trade-relationships-country-and-region/countries-and-regions/china_en; https://www.osw.waw.pl/en/publikacje/analyses/2025-07-30/china-russia-trade-early-2025-fueling-moscows-war-despite-headwinds