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In
Seeing China's Belt and Road, editors Edward Schatz and Rachel Silvey assemble the ground-level fieldwork of leading scholars to examine the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) from different "downstream" contexts, ranging from Central and Southeast Asia to Europe and Africa. Crucially, this book uncovers views of the BRI from Chinese authorities, local businesses, state bureaucrats, expatriated migrants, ordinary citizens, and environmental activists. Through these case studies, the book offers a timely analysis of the dynamic complexity of changes in the world order.
List of contents
- Introduction: Seeing the BRI
- Edward Schatz and Rachel Silvey
- Part 1: Seeing China's Infrastructural Power
- 1. Securing the Belt and Road and Establishing Hierarchy in Central Asia
- Edward Lemon and Bradley Jardine
- 2. Official Lending, Optics, and Outliers: Chinese Debt and the Belt and Road Initiative after COVID-19
- Tom Narins
- 3. Conceptualizing the BRI: Complex Bilateralism in Theory and Practice
- Jeremy Paltiel and Karl Yan
- Part 2: Seeing Exhibits, Maps, and Corridors
- 4. China and the Visual Politics of World Order
- Marina Kaneti
- 5. The Power of Blank Spaces: A Critical Cartography of China's Belt and Road Initiative in the Himalaya Region
- Galen Murton
- 6. Behind the Spectacle of the Belt and Road Initiative: Corridor Perspectives, Visibility, and a Politics of Sight
- Jessica DiCarlo
- Part 3: Seeing Connectivity, Privacy, and Labor
- 7. Prefiguring China's Digital Silk Road to Europe: Connecting Switzerland
- Lena Kaufmann
- 8. Keeping Watch along the Digital Silk Road: CCTV Surveillance and Central Asians' Right to Privacy
- Jasmin Dall'Agnola
- 9. Labor Migration Pathways under the BRI: A Case Study of Chinese Expatriates in Ethiopia
- Ding Fei
- Conclusion: Looking Downstream
- Edward Schatz and Rachel Silvey
About the author
Edward Schatz is Professor of Political Science and the Director of the Centre for European and Eurasian Studies at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, University of Toronto. He is the author of Slow Anti-Americanism: Social Movements and Symbolic Politics in Central Asia (2021), Modern Clan Politics (2004), as well as the editor of Paradox of Power: The Logics of State Weakness in Eurasia (2017) and Political Ethnography: What Immersion Contributes to the Study of Power (2009).
Rachel Silvey is Professor of Geography and Planning and Director of the Asian Institute, Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, University of Toronto. Her work has been published in the fields of migration studies, cultural and political geography, gender studies, and critical development studies. Her research has focused on migration, gender, and development in Indonesia, as well as Southeast Asian migration to the Gulf States and North America. She is
currently researching labor migration associated with BRI projects in South East Asia, as well as the migration regimes associated with the expansion of plantations in South East Asia.
Summary
Launched in 2013, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is China's signature trillion-dollar global policy. Based on infrastructure development assistance and financing, the BRI quickly set in motion a possible restructuring of the global economy and indeed the world order. In Seeing China's Belt and Road, Edward Schatz and Rachel Silvey assemble leading field researchers to consider the BRI from different "downstream" contexts, ranging from Central and Southeast Asia to Europe and Africa. By uncovering perspectives on the BRI from Chinese authorities, local businesses, state bureaucrats, expatriated migrants, ordinary citizens, and environmental activists, Seeing China's Belt and Road shows the BRI's dynamic, multidimensional character as it manifests in specific sites. A timely analysis of the BRI, this book moves beyond polarized debates about China's rise and offers a grounded assessment of the dynamic complexity of changes to the world order.
Additional text
A timely and highly recommended collection--while many studies of the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative emphasize Beijing's geopolitical and global ambitions, these essays are steeped in bottom-up observations and textured local analysis. They reveal critically important variations in how the publics of BRI host countries experience Chinese digital technologies, view overseas Chinese workers, and understand how China's infrastructure projects are transforming their own local communities.
