Two new BRI factsheets initiated by the ROADWORK project

August 2022

 

"Demystifing the Belt and Road Initiative" available here.

Discusses some of the assumptions that have emerged in the global discourse on the Belt and Road Initiative and provide research-based knowledge that should help us better understand what BRI is, and what it is not.

"China’s global development model: Looking beyond the Belt and Road Initiative" available here.

Discusses how China has seemingly burst onto the global scene as a development actor but that, in truth, there is a long history of Chinese economic engagement with its neighbors and beyond. Tracing projects shows that there is no single “model” of Chinese development.

 

These factsheet are the result of collaboration between three research projects: ROADWORK: An Anthropology of Infrastructure at China’s Inner Asian Borders (University of Fribourg, Switzerland); Environing Infrastructure: Communities, Ecologies, and China’s “Green” Development in Contemporary Southeast Asia (LMU Munich, Germany); and China Made: Asian Infrastructures and the ‘China Model’ of Development (University of Colorado, Boulder, USA) and twenty-two scholars with long-term experience of first-hand research in China and its neighboring countries:

  • Jessica Clendenning, LMU Munich, Germany
  • Jessica DiCarlo, University of British Columbia, Canada
  • Matthew S. Erie, University of Oxford, UK
  • Max Hirsh, Airport City Academy
  • Agnieszka Joniak-Lüthi, University of Fribourg, Switzerland
  • Hasan H. Karrar, Lahore University of Management Sciences, Pakistan
  • Verena La Mela, University of Fribourg, Switzerland
  • Juliet Lu, University of British Columbia, Canada
  • Till Mostowlansky, Geneva Graduate Institute, Switzerland
  • Galen Murton, James Madison University, USA
  • Huiying Ng, LMU Munich, Germany
  • Roger Norum, LMU Munich, Germany
  • Nadine Plachta, University of Toronto, Canada
  • Tim Oakes, University of Colorado Boulder, USA
  • Björn Reichhardt, University of Fribourg, Switzerland
  • Alessandro Rippa, LMU Munich, Germany
  • Jasnea Sarma, University of Zurich, Switzerland and National University of Singapore
  • Emilia Sulek, University of Fribourg, Switzerland
  • Rune Steenberg, Czech Republic
  • Dorothy Tang, National University of Singapore
  • Zarina Urmanbetova, University of Fribourg, Switzerland
  • Thomas White, University of Fribourg, Switzerland, and University of Cambridge, UK.