Via The Asia Times, an article on the hurricane of yuan blowing through Central Asia, funding everything from high-rise hotels to thousands of kilometers of highways: There never used to be much to do in Khorgos, a remote and dusty outpost on the China-Kazakh border. As recently as 2011, it was a settlement of a mere […]
Read more »Via Eurasia.net, an article on China’s investment activities in Central Asia: Poorly governed, resource-rich countries with exploding populations that are hungry for investment: Africa and Central Asia have much in common. Both are also aggressively courted by Chinese investors, these days under the catch-all Belt and Road Initiative, or BRI. Africa got a head start, […]
Read more »Via China-US focus, an interesting look at China’s unexpected decision to include Iran in its BRI initiative: In an unexpected move, China has decided to include Iran in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). In September, China announced an investment of $400 billion into the struggling economy of Iran. Proposed investments in Iran would be […]
Read more »Via The Economist, a look at China’s BRI-related foreign port-building that seems to focus more on protecting existing trade routes than expanding such: An old saying warns about Greeks bearing gifts, but it might fit the Chinese better. In the 1400s Zheng He, a Muslim slave who became the Ming empire’s admiral, led seven voyages south and west. […]
Read more »Via China Dialogue, an article on China’s new infrastructure route through Myanmar: A year ago, Myanmar and China signed an agreement to establish the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor (CMEC), as part of China’s Belt and Road global infrastructure initiative. Today, that corridor is mired in conflict between the Myanmar military and ethnic armed groups. Stretching 1,700km, […]
Read more »Via The Diplomat, an updated look at Khorgos which is less transformative than its proponents believe – and yet it does illustrate some of the promise of the BRI: Since its announcement at Nazarbayev University in Kazakhstan in 2013, what has become known as China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has prompted a host of analyses […]
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