The Material Geographies of the Belt and Road Initiative, livre ebook

This edited volume is the first to analyse the impacts of China’s New Silk Road on social inequality and local livelihoods, using a broad range of case studies from the Global South and North.

EPUB and EPDF available open access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.

China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), commonly called the New Silk Road, is a huge infrastructure project currently revitalising or creating new trading routes and large developments across the globe. It is estimated to cost up to US$8 trillion and impact more than 65% of the world’s population.

This book explores the unequal ways this controversial project is altering livelihoods, places and the environment. From road building projects in Nairobi to grassroots environmental activism in Thailand, researchers from the Global North and South analyse the real-world impacts of this unprecedented project, bringing together critical geography and political ecology approaches.

Introduction: The World Transformed - Grounding the Belt and Road Initiative - Elia Apostolopoulou, Han Cheng, Jonathan Silver and Alan Wiig

1. The Contested Coal-Fired Power in the Belt and Road Initiative: Indonesia as a Case Study - Bowen Gu

2. Dynamics of Grassroots Collectivism in Thailand’s Special Economic Zones: Cases of Natural Resource Conflicts within the Belt and Road Initiative - Ratchada Arpornsilp

3. Railways of Hope, Railways of Conflict: Governance of the Domestic Environmental Impacts of a Belt and Road Project - Xiaofeng Liu

4. A Debt to Whom? The Nature Questions in Sino-Sri Lankan Development Narratives - Orlando Woods, Kanchana Ruwanpura, Loritta Chan and Barnabas Mah

5. Waiting, Acceleration, Stabilization: Polychronic Temporalities as Drivers of a Large-Scale Chinese Green Technology Project in Thuringia, Eastern Germany - Hannes Langguth

6. Silk Road on Ice: Extractivism, Climate Change, and Resistances - Ksenija Hanaček

7. Donor Competition, Local Agency and Contingency: Jakarta-Bandung High-Speed Railway in Indonesia - Caixia Mao

8. A Postcolonial Belt and Road Initiative? Dependency, Development and Geopolitics in China-Latin America Relations - Simone Vegliò

9. The Elusive Rainbow at the End of the Belt and Road: Chinese Investment, Finance and Trade Controversies in Southern Africa - Patrick Bond

10. Beyond the Logistical Monolith: Multiplicity and Differentiation Along the Adriatic Corridor - Francesca Governa, Leonardo Ramondetti, Astrid Safina, Angelo Sampieri and Alberto Valz Gris

11. Capitalizing on the Logistical Future: Discounting Uncertainty in the Georgian Belt and Road Initiative - Evelina Gambino

12. Infrastructure-Led Development, Urban Transformation and Inequality in China’s Belt and Road Initiative: A Marxist Postcolonial Geographies Analysis - Elia Apostolopoulou

Afterword: The Material Futures of the Belt and Road Initiative - Elia Apostolopoulou, Han Cheng, Jonathan Silver and Alan Wiig