This paper comprehensively examines the current challenges and long-term strategic prospects for implementing the large-scale project of the China-Mongolia-Russia International Economic Corridor, which serves as a key integration component of the global “Belt and Road” initiative in the Eurasian space. The research focuses on internal and external factors: strengths (political trust, favorable geographical location, strategic compatibility, economic complementarity), weaknesses (underdeveloped transport infrastructure, raw-material structure of trade, funding shortages), opportunities (regional integration, reorientation of Russian trade toward the East, energy transition), and threats (geopolitical risks, promotion of the “Chinese threat” narrative, escalation of sanctions) that determine the success and effectiveness of the corridor’s implementation amid modern geopolitical and economic turbulence, risks on traditional logistics routes, and sanctions pressure. The methodological framework is based on a SWOT analysis that unites internal and external factors within a single analytical framework. The empirical base includes up-to-date statistical data for 2021–2025, systematized within the SWOT analysis. The results show that sanctions pressure has a dual impact on the economic corridor: it complicates financial settlements and restricts access to technologies, but stimulates the reorientation of Russia’s foreign trade toward the East, settlements in national currencies, and the transit potential of Mongolia. Given that after 2022 the nature of challenges and threats has changed so fundamentally as to necessitate a reassessment of existing views on the prospects of the China-Mongolia-Russia economic corridor, the scientific novelty of this work lies in identifying the asymmetry of factors (the inertial character of strengths and the dynamics of threats) and in demonstrating that the key constraining factor at the present stage is not political disagreements, but rather objective infrastructure limitations and a shortage of financing. It is concluded that, despite external pressure, trilateral cooperation has sufficient political resilience, and the implementation of the economic corridor is acquiring strategic significance as the core of forming an autonomous Eurasian economic space.
Zengqian Cheng (Wed,) studied this question.