I'm not sure that this rail system will be all it's chalked up to be, barring China managing to shut down ocean based freight. The ocean based stuff is slower, but a lot cheaper. Secondly, it doesn't rely on many unstable regions and political bullshit threatening to shut down the system at any moment. There's a reason the US established worldwide trade through the ocean rather than through europe. Maybe this will all go well, but I am skeptical. Remember that "sounds good on paper" and "sounds good to the common man" are not "is good for the economy"
The article in general is written from the standpoint that all this is somehow new, rather than decades old. I've got a link on here somewhere of stuff they did in Nigeria way back in the '70s and they basically own Kazakhstan. Ocean-based freight? They've got Cosco and OOCL. 90% of all shipping containers in the world are manufactured in China. Rail projects are much more about soft power. And the way China is operating at home, they need exports, production and growth in order to keep the economic fires stoked. Exporting it as foreign aid does some nice magic to the books.