The Belt and Road City: Geopolitics, Urbanization, and China’s Search for a New International Order

by Simon Curtis, Ian Klaus

An exploration of how China’s Belt and Road Initiative seeks to reshape international order, and has catalyzed a new era of infrastructural geopolitics
 
Over the past decade China has put infrastructural and urban development at the heart of a strategy aimed at nothing less than the transformation of international order. The Belt and Road Initiative, which seeks to revitalize and reconnect the ancient Silk Roads that linked much of the world before the rise of the West, is an attempt to place China at the center of this new international order, one shaped by Chinese power, norms, and values. It seeks to do so, in part, by shaping our shared urban future.
 
Simon Curtis and Ian Klaus explore how China’s specific investments in urban development—cities, roads, railways, ports, digital and energy connectivity—are directly linked to its foreign policy goals. Curtis and Klaus examine the implications of these developments as they evolve across this vast region.
 
The distinctive model of international order and urban life emerging with the rise of Chinese power and influence offers a potential rival to that which accompanied the rise and zenith of Western power, marking a new age of infrastructural geopolitics and Great Power competition.

Genres: China, Politics

280 pages, Hardcover

Published April 2, 2024

Reviews

[Josiah Cohen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very informational and a valuable read. Unfortunately, the text suffers from a lack of focus at times. The authors are supremely impressed with their own thesis, so much so that they trade analysis for repetition, unnecessarily interrupting the flow to wax poetic on a relatively straightforward premise. They also bungle into the Euro/USA-centric view that the Cold War represents a period of “relative” stability, despite the fact that that period saw most of the world’s population embroiled in some of the worst mass atrocities in human history (see Chamberlin’s “The Cold War’s Killing Fields.”)

Although I’m glad to have read this work and benefitted from its insights, substantively it is an academic journal article that was puffed up into a book. A detailed summary of this book would’ve served its purpose.

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book so much! My "To Be Read" list has expanded greatly. I've never read anything like this book. It starts off with a philosophy of cities and urban development. I was expecting an update on the Belt and Road Initiative from China. This is more of a philosophical exploration of what it might mean in the world. There are case studies of some specific projects. It looks at urban development, city structures, surveillance, economic impacts, and more. Hopefully someone else will write a review of this book that does it better justice. My brain loved discovering all these new ways of thinking about the world, and it's the first non-fiction book I've put on my "Favorites to Reread" shelf. (I came back to add, that the book does talk about global infrastructure, which is what the Belt and Road Initiative is primarily about on the surface.)

[NN · Rating 5 out of 5]

well-researched & thought-provoking book on how the BRI and the cities along its routes differ from traditional Global Cities. includes many case studies of BRI projects + an analysis of the extent to which Chinese influence could potentially (TBD) rival the Westphalian international order as we know it today.