This is a book on the Belt and Road Initiative, written from an unusual perspective — it is written by someone who was born in India but raised in Singapore; who has never spent a day of schooling in the greater China (Mainland, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau) but has Chinese heritage; who eventually built a long and distinguished career in the West. With such an atypical background, he took an off-the-beaten-path approach by asking the fundamental question of how such an important initiative, began entirely by China, can deeply impact and transform the millennium mindset of Chinese.Such a transformation of the Chinese shall render a new definition of what a 'powerful nation' in the 21st century should be, for the betterment of humanity. This is unlike the one made by Western civilization for many centuries since the Renaissance days. Three main outcomes of the BRI have been embedded directly or indirectly throughout the book: Supercontinent, Neo-Renaissance and Cultural Communications. The author felt that these three outcomes are the possible mitigation for the world in the 21st century, facing existential challenges.Related Link(s)
Officially announced by Xi Jinping in 2013, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has since become the centrepiece of China’s economic diplomacy. It is a commitment to ease bottlenecks to Eurasian trade by improving and building networks of connectivity across Central and Western Asia, where the BRI aims to act as a bond for the projects of regional cooperation and integration already in progress in Southern Asia. But it also reaches out to the Middle East as well as East and North Africa, a truly strategic area where the Belt joins the Road. Europe, the end-point of the New Silk Roads, both by land and by sea, is the ultimate geographic destination and political partner in the BRI. This report provides an in-depth analysis of the BRI, its logic, rationale and implications for international economic and political relations.
This book is a compilation of selected papers from the 1st Belt and Road Webinar Series on Geotechnics, Energy and Environment, March - May 2021. The book comprises selected research related to advances in geo-environmental engineering. Topics covered include rock mechanics, sustainable materials, frozen soils, geotechnical innovations in megacities. The research is related to the sustainable infrastructure development for countries in China's Belt and Road Initiative. The contents of the volume will prove useful to researchers and professionals working in geotechnical and geological engineering domains.
Combining a historical approach of Chineseness and a contemporary perspective on the social construction of Chineseness, this book provides comparative insights to understand the contingent complexities of ethnic and social formations in both China and among the Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia. This book focuses on the experiences and practices of these people, who as mobile agents are free to embrace or reject being defined as Chinese by moving across borders and reinterpreting their own histories. By historicizing the notion of Chineseness at local, regional, and global levels, the book examines intersections of authenticity, authority, culture, identity, media, power, and international relations that support or undermine different instances of Chineseness and its representations. It seeks to rescue the present from the past by presenting case studies of contingent encounters that produce the ideas, practices, and identities that become the categories nations need to justify their existence. The dynamic, fluid representations of Chineseness illustrate that it has never been an undifferentiated whole in both space and time. Through physical movements and inherited knowledge, agents of Chineseness have deployed various interpretive strategies to define and represent themselves vis-à-vis the local, regional, and global in their respective temporal experiences. This book will be relevant to students and scholars in Chinese studies and Asian studies more broadly, with a focus on identity politics, migration, popular culture, and international relations. “The Chinese overseas often saw themselves as caught between a rock and a hard place. The collection of essays here highlights the variety of experiences in Southeast Asia and China that suggest that the rock can become a huge boulder with sharp edges and the hard places can have deadly spikes. A must read for those who wonder whether Chineseness has ever been what it seems.” Wang Gungwu, University Professor, National University of Singapore. “By including reflections on constructions of Chineseness in both China itself and in various Southeast Asian sites, the book shows that being Chinese is by no means necessarily intertwined with China as a geopolitical concept, while at the same time highlighting the incongruities and tensions in the escapable relationship with China that diasporic Chinese subjects variously embody, expressed in a wide range of social phenomena such as language use, popular culture, architecture and family relations. The book is a very welcome addition to the necessary ongoing conversation on Chineseness in the 21st century.” Ien Ang, Distinguished Professor of Cultural Studies, Western Sydney University.
This book views the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a bold and all-encompassing 21st century global effort by China, with unprecedented perspectives. The BRI could be summarised as a 'revitalization' of China's ancient land-based and maritime silk roads, but it should be noted that its impact on China and the world stands on the foundation of omnipresent economics and how China transforms its mindset in the 21st century.Though initiated by China, the BRI's implementation has been a many-to-many effort from the start. This multi-regional and multi-national effort is distinctly different from the one-to-many effort of the Marshall Plan. The two meaning-defining chapters of this book, 'Omnipresent Economics: The Belt and Road Initiative Underpinning' and 'Supercontinent, Neo-Renaissance and Cultural Communications: The Millennium Mindset Transformations Induced by the Belt and Road Initiative', have made it abundantly clear that the BRI discussions presented are unique.The discussions of this book could shed new light on the BRI, a long-term and profound initiative by China, which in today's global discussions and debates, are entirely confined to geopolitical and economics arenas.
China's President Xi Jinping launched the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2013. The BRI is promoted as a way for win-win cooperation that promotes common development and prosperity. Since the introduction of BRI, China organised the inaugural One Belt One Road Summit and the Second Belt and Road Forum to spur the implementation of the Initiative.President Xi emphasised that the Belt and Road projects should uphold the principles of shared benefits and joint contributions to realise the vision of a high-quality, open, green and clean BRI. Host countries can possibly gain from China's greenfield manufacturing investments to expand the BRI markets.Contributed by academics and business professionals from Asia, Europe and Africa, the chapters discuss the contemporary people, business, civil society and government developments related to the BRI and explore Health, Environment and Security (HES) challenges that confront the Initiative. This volume shows how a host country can leverage on China's investment without losing the nation's interest.
From the Sunday Times and internationally bestselling author of The Silk Roads: everything you need to know about the present and future of the world'Masterly mapping out of a new world order' Evening Standard'Frankopan is a brilliant guide to terra incognita' The Times The New Silk Roads - Peter Frankopan's follow-up to the 'Book of the Decade', The Silk Roads - takes a fresh look at the network of relationships being formed along the length and breadth of the Silk Roads today.The world is changing dramatically and in an age of Brexit and Trump, the themes of isolation and fragmentation permeating the western world stand in sharp contrast to events along the Silk Roads, where ties have been strengthened and mutual cooperation established.Following the Silk Roads eastwards from Europe through to China, by way of Russia and the Middle East, The New Silk Roads provides a timely reminder that we live in a world that is profoundly interconnected. In this prescient contemporary history, Peter Frankopan assesses the global reverberations of these continual shifts in the centre of power - all too often absent from headlines in the west. This important - and ultimately hopeful - book asks us to reread who we are and where we are in the world, illuminating the themes on which all our lives and livelihoods depend.The Silk Roads, a major reassessment of world history, has sold over 1 million copies worldwide.
Since 1978, when China embarked on a new period of economic reforms and introduced open door policies, it has experienced a great urban transformation. The role of transport has proved indispensable in this unprecedented rapid urbanisation and economic growth. As the first research-focused book dedicated to this important topic, the Handbook on Transport and Urban Transformation in China offers new insight into the various opportunities and challenges brought by fast-paced motorization and urban development, and explores them in broad spatial-economic, environmental, social, and institutional dimensions.
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 takes a fresh look at Chinese political economy at a key inflection point. Facing a more competitive international environment, Chinese reform has shifted from its earlier focus on economic liberalization and political decentralization to a more tightly organized, centralized form of state socialism. The Party-state's vigorous fiscal reaction to the Global Financial Crisis (2008-2009) left the country with a much improved infrastructure and greater sense of national self-assurance. The more monocratic central leadership has redoubled efforts to fight poverty and pollution, push technological innovation, and at the same time rigorously enforce ideological consensus, political loyalty and anticorruption.This has been occurring in an international context of slowing trade and nationalist pushback against 'globalization', prominently including bilateral Chinese-American polarization. While China has been among the staunchest advocates and beneficiaries of globalization, incipient trade war 'decoupling' has spurred movement toward economic and technological self-reliance. Turning inward however vies with a rival impulse toward more vigorous engagement in the world. This is most consequentially represented by the Belt and Road Initiative, driving massive infrastructure construction through Central Asia and the South and Southeast Asian maritime periphery. Despite slowing growth and a large debt overhang, swift recovery from the Covid-19 epidemic leaves China in a relatively strong economic position.
