"You and I are not just driving along any road, we are driving along the great Silk Road," Ertugan, the driver who is taking me east toward the border with China, says with pride. But today instead of camel caravans carrying silk and spices, the route rumbles with trucks hauling sneakers and bed linen. As we near Zharkent, a city in Kazakhstan's southeastern Zhetysu region, we approach a car transporter that has been burned to a husk along with the Chinese electric vehicles it was hauling to market. According to Ertugan the fire was sparked either…
