1.1 Introduction to BRI Research
The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is an enormous development strategy initiated by the Chinese Government in 2013. It refers to the Silk Road Economic Belt (SREB), which links China with Europe through Central and Western Asia, and the twenty-first Century Maritime Silk Road (MSR), which connects China with Southeast Asian countries, Africa and Europe (Rolland 2017). With the BRI strategy, it is projected that China will further integrate itself into the world economy and strengthen its influence across three continents.
This hugely ambitious project aims at transnational collaboration with countries not only in Asia Pacific but also extending to Europe, Africa and beyond. The BRI will change the shape of international trade due to the huge scale of infrastructural development. In addition, due to the involvement of inter-country activities, the BRI will significantly affect the current political equilibrium. This initiative has already and will continue to alter the geopolitical balance in East Asia, Central Asia and on into Europe. Realities which have existed since the end of the Cold War are being called into question by the scope and scale of this project.
While the People’s Republic of China (PRC) strongly rejects claims that the project is neo-colonial in aim, it is a reality that it brings a substantial Chinese economic and political presence into parts of the world long considered Russia’s sphere of influence. While relations between Russia and China currently appear better than at any time in their recent history, these two huge nations have often existed in a state of mutual suspicion and BRI has the potential to once again destabilise this relationship.
In its early manifestation, China has done a good job of convincing its neighbours that the BRI is a positive and a mutually beneficial project, which could signify a new and more fairly balanced world order. Yet these are uncertain times across the whole world and while China’s neighbours currently view the BRI in a mostly favourable light, it is not hard to conceive of a situation where the optics might change and perceptions of China as trying to gain an upper hand in a region not considered its own historically, could develop. There are obvious parallels here with the nineteenth-century Great Game when Russia and Britain engaged in a fierce rivalry for influence in the same region. While China may not face a competing great power in Central Asia for now, it is not hard to conceive of a situation arising where a competing narrative to that espoused by the PRC develops.
Furthermore, the infrastructure projects are directly related to geographical issues along the BRI route. BRI is engaged mainly with infrastructure and planning on the overland and maritime trade routes. Therefore, multinational cooperation between BRI countries is vital and lessons must be learned from the past to understand the historical, social-cultural and environmental issues of BRI to avoid potentially disastrous outcomes.
Large geospatial transnational trade partnerships with Central Asia, Southeast Asia, Middle East, Europe, Japan and Korea, etc., have long been part of China’s economic strategy, with huge success in the last few decades since the “Open Door Policy” was established in 1978. Chinese transnational trade routes have existed since the Tang Dynasty (618–907 CE), understanding historical, social-cultural and environmental factors is vital when it comes to informing stakeholders, policy- and decision-makers aiming to establish long-term and sustainable ideas for further developments.
This volume focuses on the shifting nexus between global infrastructures due to the BRI and emerging issues in the political, international relations and geographical fields. Building on recent theoretical and conceptual advances in the study of infrastructure, large technical systems and technoscience in science and technology studies and innovation studies, this volume aims to bring together a broad understanding of the key issues.
1.2 The Three Distinctive Research Areas
1.2.1 Business
BRI involves a lot of bilateral infrastructure projects between China and the BRI partner countries. On the one hand, these projects generate a lot of business opportunities; on the other hand, they also demand lots of business and project management skills. Traditional business theories may not be perfectly applicable in the BRI context in practice. First, it is because the coverage of the BRI is extremely wide, and is possibly the widest regional initiative ever. In addition, it involves far more external factors, such as national security, cross-cultural issues, among others, than the other alliances or collaborations between countries. To master these projects well is not easy. Second, the ultimate objective of the BRI is to improve international trade, and consequently, new business models are needed. Therefore, the business context of BRI cannot be underestimated. Notwithstanding this, research and development in this area is surprisingly limited because currently studies are very much focusing on the high-level national issues regarding BRI. Business context is more hands-on and relates to relatively more practical issues.
More specifically, current studies in business and management domain mainly discuss the economic benefits of the BRI (Huang 2016; Zhai 2018; Li et al. 2019), optimisation of the infrastructural projects to logistics network (Shao et al. 2018; Sheu and Kundu 2018; Kuzmicz and Pesch 2019) and sustainability (Shaikh et al. 2016; Solmecke 2017; Liu and Xin 2019). Borrowing concepts from a recent review conducted by Thürer et al. (2019), the BRI will affect global business, particularly in supply chain management, in two aspects: business entities and flow.
Business entities refer to the companies in supply chains. The major aim of the BRI is to improve regional connectivity. In a business sense, this is to improve the linkage between the business entities, or companies. This requires the integration of business processes between companies in different nations. For instance, cross-border e-commerce systems aim to achieve this integration. The BRI plays an irreplaceable role in connecting the physical logistics and supply chain activities along the BRI routes in view of this integration. Otherwise, merely developing the logistics infrastructure in different BRI countries cannot achieve the intended efficiency. Nevertheless, the economic benefits or economic efficiency of introducing the BRI-related projects are still unclear. There is a pressing need to first understand how, economically, the BRI can be beneficial to the countries involved. Multi-method approaches may be required (Chan et al. 2019).
The second aspect, flow, focuses more on the linkage of the physical BRI activities or countries by emerging, and in particular, digital technologies. One potential research area in this regard is the digital Silk Road (Jia and Shuang 2015; Shen 2018). The notion of the “Digital Silk Road” or “Digital Belt and Road” (Guo et al. 2018) resonates with research on the interplay of logistics and supply chain management, the international economy and the Internet. Digital industries and infrastructures are an integral part of the BRI (Kozłowski 2018). Flow here also includes the financial flow rather than just the flow of physical goods. The integration of financial flow will lead to market integration. However, the mechanism of such market integration warrants investigating. Digital connectivity is the counterpart of the infrastructural connectivity in the physical Silk Road. Digital connectivity in the digital Silk Road is a natural extension of the evolution of the digital economy (Fishwick 2017) and is of vital importance in creating various participatory digital platforms (Fung et al. 2018; Seele et al. 2019). The development of standard information systems along the BRI is therefore of vital importance to accommodate the flow along the BRI countries. This will further promote and enhance trade and economic development along the BRI countries.
To master the above issues, it is very clear that the current talent development programmes, which normally do not take such a wide scope into consideration, are insufficient to train management personnel to deal with all challenges. There is a need to reshape talent development programmes in relation to BRI. Since BRI is international in nature, such programmes cannot be tailored to just one country or region. This will indirectly address the issues surrounding politics such as diversity in culture which may compromise national security risks.
1.2.2 Politics
A detailed exploration of the political impact of such a huge project is beyond the scope of this volume. What is intended instead is to provide a snapshot of some of the key political narrative flows taking place at this time and their potential impact in some of the regions the BRI will impact.
Of course, Central Asia is a key to BRI and any examination of the political context of the initiative must pay close attention to this huge, diverse region. It is a region of complex identities, rich in natural resources, occupying a key strategic position between Asia and Europe. The importance of Central Asia generally and to the BRI specifically cannot be in doubt, as Vakulchuk and Overland (2019, p. 116) write “Central Asia, while a culturally and historically homogenous region, remains one of the least integrated regions in the world”. It is interesting to examine the dilemma facing Central Asian states to explore what strategies are available to maximise the benefits of the BRI.
The PRC is adamant that BRI is a mutually beneficial “win-win” situation for any country willing to join it. Yet China is keenly aware of political narratives and will use the full extent of its soft and hard power to achieve its aims. The recent unprecedented security clampdown in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) in China’s northwest has demonstrated the extent to which China wil...