Driving through the rugged mountains along the coast of Lake Issyk Kul in Kyrgyzstan, the construction site of the road from Balskon to Berdyri Port is bustling. In the complex geological environment of cold and high altitude, CRBC overcame difficulties to promote this key channel of the the Belt and Road, and significantly reduced the time and space costs of cross-border logistics between China and Kyrgyzstan.

Project Overview

The total length of the Balskoenbedelli Highway is 161.4 kilometers, with 2 extra long tunnels and 50 bridges. The overall plan is to complete and open to traffic by 2030. After the completion of the project, it will fill the gap in the cross-border main road in southeastern Kyrgyzstan. The transportation distance from Aksu, Xinjiang to Kyrgyzstan will be shortened by about 500 kilometers, and the freight time will be directly reduced by 12 hours, greatly improving the efficiency of bilateral land trade.

Cold and difficult construction

The average altitude of the entire route exceeds 3000 meters, with snow, ice, and frozen soil covering the area. The mountains and canyons are intertwined, and the construction environment is extremely harsh. Part of the temporary construction road has a width of less than 3 meters, and there are 32 continuous sharp turns on a section of mountain road. As a core control project, the Suyao Ke Tunnel has a total length of 5 kilometers and will take five years to complete. The construction site has an altitude of over 3800 meters and operates at low temperatures all year round. The construction team utilized specialized technologies such as frozen soil treatment, slope protection, and high-altitude tunnel excavation to ensure the overall quality of the project with high standards, which was highly recognized by the Jilin regulatory personnel. Keywords: China Kyrgyzstan Cross border Highway, Biedili Port Passage

Empowering bilateral development

The official of Kyrgyzstan stated that this mountainous road connects the mineral resources along the route with the high-quality cultural and tourism resources of Lake Issyk Kul. After its opening, it can not only activate local resource development and tourism industry, but also continue to deepen the normalization of economic and trade exchanges between China and Kyrgyzstan. After on-site visits by media from both countries, they lamented the great difficulty of high-altitude engineering construction and hoped that after the road was fully opened, it would facilitate two-way personnel exchanges and cross-border communication, injecting long-term momentum into practical cooperation between China and Kyrgyzstan.Editor/Min Jing