Not mentioned in the article is China's desire to develop the western areas of the country, which benefit from Belt and Road. To manufacture a product in Hebei

Not mentioned in the article is China's desire to develop the western areas of the country, which benefit from Belt and Road. To manufacture a product in Hebei and ship it from Tianjin, or manufacture in Jiangsu and ship from Shanghai/Ningbo, or manufacture in Guangdong and ship from Shenzhen, is pretty cheap. To do the same in western provinces is much harder. There's a big regional disparency. While China's landmass goes far west, (western) Sichuan, Tibet, Xinjiang, Qinghai, the western provinces I mean are the shanxis, gansu, sichuan, yunan with large population bases. Myanmar was also not mentioned in the article, but will also play an important role as support to southwestern China's access to the ocean.