Mapping China’s Belt and Road Initiative: Perspectives from Without and Within

Wednesday, April 6, 2022
9:00 AM - 10:30 AM (Eastern Time)

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This event is co-sponsored by the APEC Study Center at Columbia University.

About the Event

Many debates exist about the nature of China’s engagement with the international “rule-based” order and whether the arrangements underpinning the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) will be formalized into hard laws. Research into the BRI often treats the Chinese state as a monolith and focuses on the initiative’s external manifestations, such as non-binding agreements signed between the Chinese and other governments. Our speakers, Professor Maria Adele Carrai of NYU Shanghai and Hong Zhang, a fellow at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, have analyzed policy documents issued by China’s provincial governments in response to BRI. They will demonstrate how subnational governments re-interpret the BRI and interweave it with existing or new initiatives of their own to generate a new international economic agenda largely driven by regional interests. Their analysis underscores how China’s approach to governance as an authoritarian developmental state differs from the legalistic approach of regulatory states, as it relies on administrative directives for mobilization.  

The speakers will also introduce two new tools that map China’s overseas economic engagements. The first tool uses satellite images over time to demonstrate the changes brought forward by hundreds of Chinese projects on the ground. The second tool, called “People’s Map of Global China,” is a collective effort by academics and civil society organizations worldwide to document Chinese projects and their local impacts.