Mapping China S One Belt One Road Initiative

This book sets out to analyze how the OBOR initiative will influence the world’s geo-political and geo-economic environment, with specific regard to the ‘Belt and Road’ countries and regions. It evaluates what opportunities the OBOR can offer them in light of the constraints they face, paying particular attention to how security issues may keep some nations from fully participating. Questions are also asked about the tension and conflict along the ‘Belt’ and ‘Road’, which, after all takes in the Middle East’s most tumultuous regions, as well as the much disputed South China Sea. Finally, consideration is given as to how the world’s other economic powers will react when the OBOR inevitably brings about capital and resource competitions.

Chinese President Xi Jinping launched the Silk Road Economic Belt component of the One Belt One Road (OBOR) initiative at Kazakhstan in 2013. OBOR is a development strategy and framework that focuses on connectivity and cooperation among countries primarily in Eurasia. It consists of two main components, the land-based "Silk Road Economic Belt" (SREB) and ocean-going "Maritime Silk Road" (MSR). This book studies the equilibrium or balance between overland and maritime trade routes of OBOR. This book has two major sections. The interpretive section examines contemporary media narratives related to the OBOR initiative and how contemporary commentators appropriate narratives about historical events related to the maritime Silk Road to interpret current policy agendas and legitimize diplomatic or economic exchanges. In terms of institutional studies, the chapters related to Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) will look at the issues facing the Bank in its quest in forming a new world platform for multilateral development financing. The other section, the empirical case study of the publication highlights the fact that Euro-China High Speed Rail (HSR) and Central Asia-China HSR are not viable at the moment as passenger volume is not sufficient to justify the HSR line. This section examines the overland route of the OBOR and looks at recent Chinese HSR history and conventional sub-high speed rail technology development, and identifies technical & economic criteria determining the appropriate technology for a certain line. The chapter in this section will use the developed criteria to analyze the various rail linkage projects currently under study in the OBOR framework, highlight the economic, bureaucratic and geo-political challenges that these projects likely face and lay down conditions that will determine the outcome of these projects.

China's massive, globe-spanning Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) seeks to build everything from railways, ports, and power plants to telecommunications infrastructure and fiber-optic cables. Chinese President Xi Jinping's signature foreign policy endeavor, BRI has the potential to meet developing countries' needs and spur economic growth, but its implementation creates risks that outweigh its benefits. Unless the United States offers an effective alternative, China could reorient global trade networks, set technical standards that would disadvantage non-Chinese companies, lock countries into carbon-intensive power generation, increase its political influence over countries, and acquire power projection capabilities for its military. The COVID-19 pandemic has made a U.S. response more urgent as the global economic contraction has accelerated the reckoning with BRI-related debt. China's Belt and Road: Implications for the United States proposes that the United States respond to BRI by putting forward an affirmative agenda of its own, drawing on its strengths and coordinating with allies and partners to promote sustainable, secure, and green development.

This insightful book examines the growing role of China on the global stage by gauging the varying reactions of international spectators to Beijing’s hugely significant Belt and Road Initiative. Laced with detailed empirical studies and an array of illustrative maps, Peter Rimmer assesses the domestic impact of the Initiative thus far and offers an astute appraisal of the imperial connotations of Beijing’s global logistical project.

The contributions compiled in this issue engage in critical evaluation of China's "New Silk Road initiative" ("Belt and Road Initiative" [BRI]) by focusing on the potential long-term political and economic effects and implications for Sino-EUropean and Sino-African relations. The authors take the launching of the BRI (October 2013) as a starting point for a general, theory-guided qualitative re-evaluation of the basic patterns of Chinese foreign relations and global interactions under the fifth generation of Chinese political leaders. In 2013, the Chinese state president, Xi Jinping, framed BRI as a global connectivity network consisting of a multitude of overland passages and maritime transportation corridors. Xi Jinping's report to the 19th Party Congress (2017) set the BRI as an anchor concept of China's fine-tuned foreign strategy in the 21st century.

China’s New Silk Road initiative constitutes one of the most ambitious projects in recent decades designed to change the pattern of the global economic division of labour as well as the geostrategic balance of power. It has the potential to create a new fabric of industrial value creation that links China and East Asia via Central and South Asia with Europe, and to forge new regional and multilateral institutions that complement or compete with existing regional and global governance systems. First proposed in 2013, the new initiative is only now starting to be rolled-out, with trade relations gradually intensifying, and the first investment projects and infrastructure clusters becoming manifest. However, the full impact of the evolving new regional value chains on global goods flows, investment activity, supra-national institution building, as well as their wider international implications, remains undetermined. This book brings together leading scholars from economics, political science and area studies, who present the latest cutting-edge knowledge and the latest state-of-the-art economic and political analysis on how the new initiative is developing and likely to develop.

Since the introduction of the One Belt, One Road initiative (OBOR), first proposed in late 2013, international scholars have begun to study this new policy and its implications in the global age. While OBOR provides new opportunities for China in terms of regional cooperation and global development, many also raise concerns about China’s intentions of using economic means to achieve strategic and foreign policy objectives. Hailing from the West and the East, the authors reflect on the wide-ranging impacts of OBOR on specific countries, regions, economic policies, and geopolitical considerations. Including both theoretical research and empirical studies that explore opportunities and challenges related to OBOR, this edited volume will allow readers to gain a more comprehensive understanding of this ambitious undertaking and its long-term impact on the rest of the world.