HU 3900: China and the World: Journal Articles

Abstract:
The Belt & Road Initiative is China's greatest international economic ambition, aiming at stimulating economic development in a vast region covering sub regions in Asia, Europe and Africa, which accounts for 64% of world population and 30% of world GDP. The Initiative is devised to reconfigure China's external sector in order to continue its strong growth. While infrastructure development plays a central role, the Belt & Road Initiative is a comprehensive one, including also policy dialogue, unimpeded trade, financial support and people-to-people exchange. It is too early to assess the impact of this ambitious Initiative. It certainly has the potential of turning the underdeveloped “Belt & Road” region into a new vibrant economic pillar and contributing to economic policy thinking by incorporating successful experiences of emerging market economies. However, the Initiative also faces very high barriers, including lack of central coordination mechanism, potential clash of different political regimes and beliefs and financial viability of cross-border projects.

Abstract:
Since its unveiling at the end of 2013, China's "One Belt One Road" initiative, or BRI for Belt and Road Initiative, as it is now officially known -- an awkward label that does not do justice to the poetry of its Chinese name, yidai yilu -- has clearly emerged as one of President Xi Jinping's top priorities. Despite its evident importance, the BRI has thus far received comparatively little attention from the US. This is due in part to the fact that tensions in the South China Sea and on the Korean Peninsula continue to occupy the attention of Asia watchers in America.

Abstract:
A centre for Asian and intercontinental immigration and export-oriented production, Guangzhou city is at the forefront of China’s global interactions. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, this article examines informal governance mechanisms that co-ordinate the circulation of goods and capital between China and Africa. The question addressed is: What roles do mobility and sojourning play in governing trade relations? The analysis is informed by research from three fields: economics scholarship on the trade–migration nexus, ethnographic studies of informal trans-border trade, and historical accounts of long-distance trade in pre-colonial and colonial eras. These traditions point to different ways in which the mobility of people and goods are interlinked. In the case of China–Africa interactions, the flow of goods has increased in tandem with the number of visits by African itinerant traders. The empirical discussion demonstrates that the emergence of intercontinental movements of goods and people between China and Africa was predicated on the brokering role played by African sojourners in Guangzhou. Of particular importance was informal hospitality and logistics infrastructure set up by Africans in the late 1990s, which subsequently evolved and adapted. This infrastructure has facilitated the mobility of people and goods and increased the pace at which trading capital circulates.