China’s Maritime Silk Road
Seven CSIS experts unpack the economic and geostrategic implications of China’s infrastructure development across the Indo-Pacific region under the Maritime Silk Road.
China’s Belt & Road
China’s flagship foreign policy effort could reshape the world’s digital, trade, and transport networks and political ties for decades to come.
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Is China’s Belt and Road Working?
A special report by Nikkei Asian Review and The Banker which leverages data from the CSIS Reconnecting Asia Project has found that China’s Belt and Road initiative holds considerable promise for countries in need of infrastructure investment along its route, however, participation has been hampered by challenges ranging from a lack of participation by local workers and banks to unmanageable debt hangovers.
China’s Shrewd Bet on Intercontinental Rail
It is tempting to believe the old Silk Road is being revived by locomotives. The first rail service from Amsterdam to China began this month, expanding a network that China has made a signature feature of its Belt and Road Initiative. Such services, spanning continents and regions, have grown significantly in recent years, but recent research suggests that like other aspects of the BRI, their economic importance is less game-changing than advertised.
What Is an Economic Corridor?
In November 2016, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) was declared open as the first truckload of Chinese goods reached Gwadar Port for international shipment. CPEC is one of six economic corridors (ECs) Chinese president Xi Jinping has announced as part of the country’s Belt and Road Initiative. In response, India and Japan have teamed up to develop an ambitious economic corridor of their own: the Asia-Africa Growth Corridor. As Asia’s powers advance competing visions for connectivity, it is important to understand what this amorphous concept entails.
Traveling China’s Economic Belt from Yiwu to London
To better understand the opportunities and challenges posed along China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the members of The New Silk Road Project will travel 10,000 miles across China’s Economic Belt to explore the people, projects, countries, and landscapes involved. We expect to depart from London and Rotterdam, two western termini of the Belt and Road, in June 2018. Over 60 days, we will travel to Yiwu, a city in East China that houses the world’s largest wholesale market and aspires to send more of its goods along the BRI’s overland routes. We will focus on two key corridors: the New Eurasian Land Bridge and China-Central Asia-West Asia Economic Corridor, attempting to visit over two dozen ‘Silk Road’ hubs along this fast-evolving axis.