Railways have begun to shape diplomacy, not follow it

and 2026-08-24T11:44:00

Fuxing HS

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Railways have stopped simply connecting nations. Increasingly, they are helping decide how nations relate to one another.

The railway has been read as engineering and as the machinery of empire. Chitresh Shrivastva argues it is now an instrument of statecraft, and ahead of Pursuing Railway Diplomacy he sets out why the people who build and run the network are now part of a contest between nations.

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