The Belt And Road Initiative As Epochal Regionalisation

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), launched by China in 2013, carries and projects powerful regional dimensions and transformations, with short- and long-term global, national and local consequences. The BRI’s regional significance lies in its designation and creation of several cross-border corridors that originate from inside China and extend out into its neighbouring countries, and those farther afield in Asia, Africa and Europe. Through driving and facilitating new trade and infrastructure connections along and beyond these corridors, the BRI has begun to reshape the master processes of globalisation, urbanisation and development by affecting the economic, social and spatial fortunes of many countries and cities. This book serves two purposes. First, through a new framework and three case studies, it examines the BRI’s impacts on globalisation, urbanisation and development via the China-Europe Freight Train, the paired construction of a new city and railway across the China-Laos borderland and the port-park-city development corridor between Djibouti and Ethiopia. Second, the comparative analysis and evidence guide the book to advance policy recommendations for targeted stakeholders that can potentially turn the BRI into a global public good with greater benefits and fewer risks.

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), launched by China in 2013, carries and projects powerful regional dimensions and transformations, with short- and long-term global, national and local consequences. The BRI’s regional significance lies in its designation and creation of several cross-border corridors that originate from inside China and extend out into its neighbouring countries, and those farther afield in Asia, Africa and Europe. Through driving and facilitating new trade and infrastructure connections along and beyond these corridors, the BRI has begun to reshape the master processes of globalisation, urbanisation and development by affecting the economic, social and spatial fortunes of many countries and cities. This book serves two purposes. First, through a new framework and three case studies, it examines the BRI’s impacts on globalisation, urbanisation and development via the China-Europe Freight Train, the paired construction of a new city and railway across the China-Laos borderland and the port-park-city development corridor between Djibouti and Ethiopia. Second, the comparative analysis and evidence guide the book to advance policy recommendations for targeted stakeholders that can potentially turn the BRI into a global public good with greater benefits and fewer risks.

This book analyzes the origins and the impacts of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) on diplomacy, economy (trade, investment, finance), and security among selected host countries and regions in Asia, Africa, and the European Union. By examining the geopolitical economy of BRI activities, it concisely describes the impact of the rise of China and its BRI policy strategy on the reshaping of world order and global governance. This volume explores the BRI by addressing several key questions including: • Why did the Chinese leadership set up the BRI? • What are the activities of BRI projects in the participating countries and related regions? • What are the challenges to the successful implementation of the BRI in the various countries and regions? Moreover, through its analysis of the abovementioned questions, it provides novel contributions to the ongoing scholarly debates between Chinese and non-Chinese scholars – among others, the debate surrounding the “rise of China” and its impact on global governance. Featuring an extensive variety of expert contributors, this study will be an essential reading for students and scholars of International Relations and Global Political Economy as well as Chinese politics and those with an interest in the Belt and Road Initiative more broadly.

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is emerging as a vital lynch-pin in China's efforts to establish a maritime and continental zone of influence in the Indo-Pacific region. The Belt and Road Initiative and the Future of Regional Order in the Indo-Pacific interrogates to what extent BRI represents an achievable vision of a China-centric order in Asia and explores its major security implications for the region. The contributions to this volume provide up-to-date analysis of the effect of BRI on the region's foreign policy and alliance patterns, its connection to geo-economics and domestic Chinese politics, and the policy responses of key Indo-Pacific actors. While acknowledging that BRI remains prey to a variety of internal and exogenous shocks, the contributors conclude that at the very least BRI will continue to disrupt the existing alignments of economic and strategic interests in the Indo-Pacific and that on this minimal basis BRI will likely be judged a success by China. For regional actors, however, the BRI simultaneously enhances choice while presenting strategic and economic risks of greater dependency on China - a dilemma intensified by the disruptive effects of the Trump administration on regional confidence in the longevity of American commitments and leadership.

China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is intended to radically increase investment and integration along a series of land and maritime routes. As the initiative involves more than 100 countries or international organizations and huge amounts of infrastructure construction, cooperation between many different markets is essential to its success. Cheung and Hong have edited a collection of essays that, between them, examine a range of practical issues facing the BRI and how those issues are being addressed in a range of countries. Such challenges include managing financing and investment, ensuring infrastructure connectivity, and handling the necessary e-commerce and physical logistics. Emphasizing the role of Hong Kong as an intermediary and enabler in the process, this book attempts to tackle the key practical challenges facing the BRI and anticipate how these challenges will affect the initiative’s further development. The book provides a holistic and international approach to understanding the implementation of the BRI and its implications for the future economic integration of this huge region. Chapter 5 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 3.0 license. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tandfbis/rt-files/docs/Open+Access+Chapters/9780429467172_oachapter5.pdf

This contribution to the World Scientific series on the Belt and Road Initiative focuses on the overland connections west from China, the Silk Road Economic Belt component of the BRI. It emphasizes the economic underpinning of the Belt in the market-driven creation of the Eurasian Landbridge and the linking of regional value chains. A fundamental economic driver behind this is the twenty-first century evolution of international value chains, in which China plays a major role, and their transformation by new trade technologies. Finer fragmentation of production and wider scanning for participants in value chains underlie the need for common, preferably global, regulation of new trade technologies and the emergence of mega-regional trade agreements (and China's response to such agreements).Thus, the Eurasian part of the Belt and Road Initiative must be seen in conjunction with China's growing role in the twenty-first-century global economy. Especially since the 2016 US presidential election, these connections have become entwined with China's reactions to criticisms of the Belt and Road Initiative and China's recognition of the benefits of more nuanced economic diplomacy to find common ground with other economic powers, notably the European Union and signatories of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership.

This timely Research Handbook investigates the radically transformative impact of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), addressing key questions regarding its economic, political and strategic consequences: what does the Chinese government hope to achieve with the BRI? How have recipient states responded? And what are its potential opportunities and risks?

The IISS Strategic Dossier China’s Belt and Road Initiative provides a geopolitical and geo-economic assessment of President Xi Jinping’s flagship foreign-policy initiative. The dossier explores the Belt and Road Initiative’s role in China’s domestic industrial strategy and in the country’s growing influence around the world. It studies how Beijing’s ambitions, management and financing of the initiative have evolved since its launch in 2013. In addition, the volume reflects on the future of China’s initiative following the COVID-19 pandemic. The dossier is organised around a region by region assessment of what Beijing has sought to achieve in different countries and how the Belt and Road Initiative has played out over time. The volume examines recipient countries’ responses to the Belt and Road Initiative and how these have affected it. It also looks at responses from other global and regional powers to China’s economic activities around the world and offers thoughts on ways the West might better contend with Beijing’s geo-economic influence.

The book begins with an overview on China’s Belt and Road Initiative, highlighting its complex character as a domestic and international development strategy, and offering an up-to-date evaluation of it. In response to this complexity, the book attempts to highlight the Belt and Road Initiative’s double character and how it will address primary domestic development challenges that the Chinese government is facing by adding an international focus to a domestic development strategy. This in turn supports the understanding of China’s political-economic policy and strategy formulation by reminding that supporting China’s domestic development is still the primary task of its government. Even as the domestic aspect of the Belt and Road Initiative is highlighted, its regional and international relevance cannot be ignored either. The Belt and Road Initiative will support a continuation of the persisting debate about the impact that China’s rise generates, and to what extent China can be characterised as a satisfied status quo power or a dissatisfied, revisionist power. In this context, the book draws attention to the various impacts that the Belt and Road Initiative generates in different regional settings. However, the book also identifies some of the limitations that China’s Belt and Road Initiative encounters, despite the seemingly convincing economic goals it offers, and explains why a few of the countries, like India, are resisting the lure.

"This contribution to the World Scientific series on the Belt and Road Initiative focuses on the overland connections west from China, the Silk Road Economic Belt component of the BRI. It emphasizes the economic underpinning of the Belt in the market-driven creation of the Eurasian Landbridge and the linking of regional value chains. A fundamental economic driver behind this is the twenty-first century evolution of international value chains, in which China plays a major role, and their transformation by new trade technologies. Finer fragmentation of production and wider scanning for participants in value chains underlie the need for common, preferably global, regulation of new trade technologies and the emergence of mega-regional trade agreements (and China's response to such agreements). Thus, the Eurasian part of the Belt and Road Initiative must be seen in conjunction with China's growing role in the twenty-first-century global economy. Especially since the 2016 US presidential election, these connections have become entwined with China's reactions to criticisms of the Belt and Road Initiative and China's recognition of the benefits of more nuanced economic diplomacy to find common ground with other economic powers, notably the European Union and signatories of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnershi.p"--