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131. Can China Realize Africa’s Dream of an East-West Transport Link?

Author:
Cobus van Staden
Publication Date:
04-2018
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
China Brief
Institution:
The Jamestown Foundation
Abstract:
Several ambitious schemes have been proposed to link Africa’s east and west coasts, some of which are closer to full realization than others. Most notable in this respect is a plan to expand the existing Trans-African Highway 5 (TAH5) into a true cross-continental road and rail link, the early stages of which China has helped bring to fruition where Western consortiums failed. Likewise, Chinese investment in African infrastructure through Beijing’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) may help create expanded sub-regional linkages, particularly in East Africa, that could help facilitate the emergence of an eventual, true East-West link in the long term. However, in the short-to-mid-term, the obstacles to a truly robust set of East-West transport links are formidable, and it is unlikely that China’s involvement will be a panacea.
Topic:
Development, International Trade and Finance, Infrastructure, and Soft Power
Political Geography:
Africa, China, and Asia

132. China in Latin America

Author:
Tatiana Rosito, Benjamin Creutzfeldt, Chang Yunbo, Enrique Dussel Peters, and Renato Baumann
Publication Date:
06-2018
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Brazilian Center for International Relations (CEBRI)
Abstract:
At its eighth meeting, CEBRI’s China Analysis Group Meeting held a constructive dialogue about the different aspects of China’s presence in Latin America, and the risks and benefits involved. Overall, participants noted that Chinese engagement in the region through trade and investments is closely related to the reproduction of a geopolitical model aimed at promoting access to natural resources. Another important stream of activities include infrastructure investments and projects, mostly through engineering and construction services. Although there could be a potential for investments to help diversify the relationship, they have mostly reinforced existing asymmetries in the trade structure between China and Latin America.
Topic:
Natural Resources, Infrastructure, Geopolitics, Investment, and Trade
Political Geography:
China, Asia, and Latin America

133. The Belt and Road Initiative: views from Brazil and other partners

Author:
Anna Jaguaribe, Benoni Belli, Tatiana Rosito, Carsten Hasbach, and Tobias Dennehy
Publication Date:
08-2018
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Brazilian Center for International Relations (CEBRI)
Abstract:
At its ninth meeting, CEBRI’s China Analysis Group promoted insightful exchanges among varied stakeholders concerning the implications of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Speakers focused on analyzing its strategic significance for China and the opportunities established for different actors involved, including partner countries and multinational companies operating in fields related to infrastructure. In light of the BRI’s impressive figures – encompassing over 90 countries, around 50% of global GDP and 70% of the world's population – participants explored the Initiative’s meaning beyond infrastructure investments and connectivity, stressing its geopolitical nature and the central role in the Chinese ambition to shape the future of globalization and the global order.
Topic:
Globalization, Infrastructure, Geopolitics, and Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)
Political Geography:
China, Brazil, and South America

134. WHO WILL MANAGE THE TRADE-OFFS BETWEEN RIGHTS AND SECURITY ON THE INTERNET?

Author:
Deborah Avant
Publication Date:
10-2018
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
Political Violence @ A Glance
Abstract:
Despite much focus on China and Russia, the Internet’s future is being shaped by a more varied set of relationships. In a recent example, Microsoft employees issued an open letter asking the company not to bid on the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) contract to build cloud services for the Department of Defense. The employees complain that the JEDI contract may violate Microsoft values: to “empower everyone on the planet to do more”. It is unclear just what Microsoft would be doing (cloud services can refer to everything from infrastructure to platforms to software—and the security to support each), but employees worry that their efforts could be used to harm others.
Topic:
Security, Human Rights, Science and Technology, Infrastructure, Internet, and Civil Liberties
Political Geography:
Russia, China, and United States of America

135. Where rents are driven by quality of public services, not proximity to transit

Author:
Ammar A. Malik and Harsh Parikh
Publication Date:
08-2017
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
Urban Institute
Abstract:
Urban residents around the world know that housing close to mass transit commands a price premium. Living near transit stations saves residents time and money, which is reflected in rents. Studies evaluating the impact of bus rapid transit (BRT) services in Beijing, China, and Brisbane, Australia, have found rents of properties near stations to be 10 and 20 percent higher than those farther away. The value of properties within six miles of mass urban transit are known to increase two to three times faster than those outside. But does this relationship hold true everywhere? And what factors complicate it?
Topic:
Infrastructure, Transportation, Rent, and Public Service
Political Geography:
China, Asia, and Australia

136. Making Inroads: China's New Silk Road Initiative

Author:
Christine R. Guluzian
Publication Date:
01-2017
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Cato Journal
Institution:
The Cato Institute
Abstract:
China’s New Silk Road initiative is a multistate commercial project as grandiose as it is ambitious. Comprised of an overland economic “belt” and a maritime transit component, it envisages the development of a trade network traversing numerous countries and continents. Major investments in infrastructure are to establish new commercial hubs along the route, linking regions together via railroads, ports, energy transit systems, and technology. A relatively novel concept introduced by China’s President Xi Jinping in 2013, several projects related to the New Silk Road initiative—also called “One Belt, One Road” (OBOR, or B&R)—are being planned, are under construction, or have been recently completed. The New Silk Road is a fluid concept in its formative stages: it encompasses a variety of projects and is all-inclusive in terms of countries welcomed to participate. For these reasons, it has been labeled an abstract or visionary project. However, those in the region can attest that the New Silk Road is a reality, backed by Chinese hard currency. Thus, while Washington continues to deliberate on an overarching policy toward Asia, Beijing is making inroads—literally and figuratively— across the region and beyond.
Topic:
Infrastructure, Soft Power, Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), and Trade
Political Geography:
China and Asia

137. China’s Relationship with Chile: The Struggle for the Future Regime of the Pacific

Author:
Evan Ellis
Publication Date:
11-2017
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
China Brief
Institution:
The Jamestown Foundation
Abstract:
Though superpower diplomacy dominated coverage of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum (APEC) leaders summit in November, China’s upgrading of a free-trade agreement with Chile served to highlight the strength of an economic and political relationship that it has built with the country, and the influential position Chile currently occupies in shaping Chinese engagement with Latin America.
Topic:
International Trade and Finance, Treaties and Agreements, Bilateral Relations, Infrastructure, and Foreign Direct Investment
Political Geography:
China, Asia, South America, and Chile

138. China’s Belt and Road: a Game Changer?

Author:
Alessia Amighini
Publication Date:
05-2017
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Italian Institute for International Political Studies (ISPI)
Abstract:
Officially announced by president 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 Belt and Road Initiative. This report, edited by Alessia Amighini, provides an in-depth analysis of the BRI, its logic, rationale and implications for international economic and political relations.
Topic:
Diplomacy, Infrastructure, Economy, and Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)
Political Geography:
China and Asia

139. Arctic Imperatives: Reinforcing U.S. Strategy on America’s Fourth Coast

Author:
Thad W. Allen, Christine Todd Whitman, and Esther Brimmer
Publication Date:
03-2017
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
"The United States, through Alaska, is a significant Arctic nation with strategic, economic, and scientific interests," asserts a new Council on Foreign Relations-sponsored (CFR) Independent Task Force report, Arctic Imperatives: Reinforcing U.S. Strategy on America's Fourth Coast. With the Arctic "warming at twice the rate as the rest of the planet" and melting sea ice opening up this resource-rich region to new trade routes and commercial activities, the report stresses that "the United States needs to increase its strategic commitment to the region or risk leaving its interests unprotected." The report notes that while Russia has numerous ice-breaking vessels and China is building a third icebreaker, the United States owns only two operational icebreaking ships—one heavy icebreaker and one medium-weight icebreaker—to serve both the Arctic and the Antarctic. Asserting that "icebreakers are a national capacity" required for a range of maritime missions to support U.S. security, economic, and commercial needs, the Task Force recommends that the United States fund and build additional icebreakers. The report also finds that the United States needs greater investment in Alaskan infrastructure, including deepwater ports, roads, and reliable telecommunications, to support economic development and a sustained security presence in the region. Currently, "almost no marine infrastructure is in place within the U.S. maritime Arctic."
Topic:
Climate Change, International Trade and Finance, Infrastructure, Hegemony, and Conflict
Political Geography:
Russia, China, Europe, Asia, North America, Arctic, and United States of America

140. China and the Middle East: Venturing into the Maelstrom

Author:
James M Dorsey
Publication Date:
03-2016
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies
Abstract:
China’s increasingly significant economic and security interests in the Middle East have several impacts. It affects not only its energy security but also its regional posture, relations with regional powers as well as the United States, and efforts to pacify nationalist and Islamist Uighurs in its north-western province of Xinjiang. Those interests are considerably enhanced by China’s One Belt, One Road initiative that seeks to patch together a Eurasian land mass through inter-linked infrastructure, investment and expanded trade relations. Protecting its mushrooming interests is forcing China to realign its policies and relationships in the region. As it takes stock of the Middle East and North Africa’s volatility and tumultuous, often violent political transitions, China feels the pressure to acknowledge that it no longer can remain aloof to the Middle East and North Africa’s multiple conflicts. China’s long-standing insistence on non-interference in the domestic affairs of others, refusal to envision a foreign military presence and its perseverance that its primary focus is the development of mutually beneficial economic and commercial relations, increasingly falls short of what it needs to do to safeguard its vital interests. Increasingly, China will have to become a regional player in competitive cooperation with the United States, the dominant external actor in the region for the foreseeable future. The pressure to revisit long-standing foreign and defence policy principles is also driven by the fact that China’s key interests in the Middle East and North Africa have expanded significantly beyond the narrow focus of energy despite its dependence on the region for half 1 China has signalled its gradual recognition of these new realities with the publication in January 2016 of an Arab Policy Paper, the country’s first articulation of a policy towards the Middle East and North Africa. But, rather than spelling out specific policies, the paper reiterated the generalities of China’s core focus in its relations with the Arab world: economics, energy, counter-terrorism, security, technical cooperation and its One Belt, One Road initiative. Ultimately however, China will have to develop a strategic vision that outlines foreign and defence policies it needs to put in place to protect its expanding strategic, geopolitical, economic, and commercial interests in the Middle East and North Africa; its role and place in the region as a rising superpower in the region; and its relationship and cooperation with the United States in managing, if not resolving conflict.
Topic:
Security, Diplomacy, Economics, Imperialism, and Infrastructure
Political Geography:
Africa, United States, China, Middle East, Asia, and North Africa