Silk road bottom-up: Regional perspectives on the ‘Belt and Road Initiative’

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Abstract

More than 2,000 years of trade along the Silk Route through Central Asia have “proved that countries with differences in race, belief and cultural background can absolutely share peace and development as long as they persist in unity and mutual trust, equality and mutual benefit, mutual tolerance and learning from each other, as well as cooperation and win-win outcomes.” So said Chinese President Xi Jinping in Kazakhstan in late 2013, when for the first time he promoted the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) to open new land and maritime trade routes and infrastructure corridors across Central Asia, the Indian Ocean, and beyond. Like the Silk Road of old, the BRI is less a single corridor than a number of routes, including the China-Indian Ocean-Africa-Mediterranean Sea Blue Economic Passage, China-Indochina Peninsula Economic Corridor, China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and the Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar Economic Corridor (BCIM-EC).