On the episode, Juliet and Erik speak with Senior Fellow and Director of the Reconnecting Asia Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Jonathan E. Hillman. Jon discusses the BRI in a historical context and talks about the way he's seen the BRI shift since its inception in 2013. The interview is based on Jon's 2020 book The Emperor's New Road : China and the Project of the Century (Yale University Press -- Juliet's review of the book) Recommendations: Juliet: 1) Feature on ...
Aug 16, 2021•39 min•Ep. 48
On this episode, Juliet talks with Dr. Kristen Hopewell, the Canada Research Chair in Global Policy in the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at the University of British Columbia. Also a Wilson China Fellow, Kristen's work sheds light on how international governing bodies like the WTO and OECD can influence and be influenced by growing Chinese agricultural trade, subsidies, and export credit, combined with the increasing exercise of power by emerging powers coming to the international f...
Jul 15, 2021•38 min•Ep. 47
On this episode Juliet and Erik speak with Dr. Julie Klinger about her research that smartly connects the seemingly disparate topics of geological surveying, Chinese domestic environmental and social movements, international infrastructure investments and China-Africa space cooperation. It's a fascinating discussion that you certainly don't want to miss! Our interview is based on: 1) Julie's amazing book, Rare Earth Frontiers 2) " Environment, development, and security politics in the production...
Jun 22, 2021•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 46
In this episode, Erik is joined by Terrence Neal and Dr. Elizabeth Losos to discuss their recent report that uses Ghana's $2bn bauxite-for-infrastructure deal with Sinohydro as a case study to look into the environmental implications of BRI resource-financed infrastructure agreements. Read the full report here: " The Environmental Implications of China-Africa Resource-Finance Infrastructure Agreements: Lessons Learned from Ghana's Sinohydro Agreement " About the authors: T errence Neal is a natu...
Apr 25, 2021•48 min•Ep. 43
Juliet and Erik talk with research assistant professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology - Kelly Chen about her latest publication on the effects of Chinese infrastructure aid in Laos: hidden labor struggles, subcontracting, equity, and how it all came to a head with the Trans-Laos Railway project. Kelly dives into Chinese international lending, economic geographies, and narratives about creditworthiness and power through this case study. Read Kelly's work here: Sovereign Deb...
Mar 16, 2021•49 min•Ep. 42
On this episode, Juliet and Erik talk with Margaret Myers about the growing importance of Sub-national actors in China's geo-economic engagement in Latin America and the Caribbean. Read the entire report "Going Local: An Assessment of China's Administrative-Level Activity in Latin America and the Caribbean" here Margaret Myers is the director of the Asia & Latin America Program at the Inter-American Dialogue. Recommendations: Margaret: - Yellowstone, Infrastructure Finance: The Business of I...
Feb 23, 2021•52 min•Ep. 41
China is not the only player in the infrastructure investment game. So how does China's rising engagement under the Belt and Road intersect with investments of other countries? Jessica Liao shares multiple examples in which China's engagement in infrastructure investments, as well as in other areas of export investment management (e.g. export credit agencies), provoke competition with and sometimes the weakening of standards among other investor countries. Read the following articles by Jessica:...
Jan 21, 2021•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 40
Countries along the Belt and Road face major strategic technical and political questions when considering Chinese assistance in the telecommunications field. In this episode, Dr. DingFei discusses two articles on Chinese telecoms investments in Ethiopia. Through the lenses of Ethiopian state-Chinese company negotiations as well as employment practices, she explains how Ethiopian actors have corralled Chinese company interests to better serve their priorities and put bounds on their dominance of ...
Dec 31, 2020•34 min•Ep. 39
Who makes decisions about project approval, design, and the pursuit of sustainability - in China, in recipient countries, and beyond? A recent report entitled, ' Belt and Road Decision-making in China and Recipient Countries: How and To What Extent Does Sustainability Matter? ' breaks this question down artfully to trace the interests and institutional structures shaping BRI projects. Listen to our interview with two of the three the authors, Thomas Hale (Associate Professor of Global Public Pol...
Dec 18, 2020•49 min•Ep. 38
The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Region is vitally important to China, particularly as a source of oil but also increasingly as a staging ground for China's forays into global politics. Lucille Greer (@Lucille_Greer_), an expert on China-MENA relations, sheds light on a range of topics from the role of Xinjiang in China's Islamic world relations to the 'strategic alliance' between China and Iran. Lucille has written extensively on the topic, see for example, - " Last Among Equals: The Chi...
Nov 29, 2020•53 min•Ep. 37
China is a leader in global power generation - both through fossil fuel and clean energy technologies. Chinese capital has been involved in establishing at least 777 power plants across the world, providing 186.5 GW of power generation capacity. To track China's impact on global power generation, Boston University's Global China Initiative is launching "China's Global Power Database" which Erik & Juliet discuss with BU's Cecilia Han Springer and Ma Xinyue. This database tracks all the world'...
Oct 28, 2020•40 min•Ep. 36
Labor is a lightning rod for judgments of the benefits of the Belt and Road: Will Chinese projects generate work opportunities for the host country? Do Chinese employers follow different labor standards than others? When and how do workers speak out against poor labor conditions? Ivan Franceschini brings a few new angles to the labor question. He knows the domestic labor situation in China well, and draws connections between the domestic context and what is happening in Cambodia today. In his Ca...
Oct 12, 2020•54 min•Ep. 35
Prof. Dr. Lina Benabdallah discusses her latest book, " Shaping the Future of Power: Knowledge production and network-building in China-Africa Relations . " Lina looks at China's rise and the Belt and Road beyond the hardware investments - the major infrastructure projects which have been most emphasized. She compares three major types of professionalization interventions: military and security cooperation, media and journalist training, and educational exchanges such as those done through Confu...
Sep 21, 2020•54 min•Ep. 34
In this episode, Dr. Tyler Harlan breaks down the discourses vs. reality of the green turn in the Belt and Road Initiative since Xi Jinping announced it in 2017. He describes the state of knowledge and realities of implementation of the three main aspects of the 'Green Belt and Road': green finance, green energy, and green development cooperation. He also reflects on his research on rural development within China and on China's renewable energy investments across the Mekong Region to shed light ...
Aug 27, 2020•45 min•Ep. 33
How does Chinese capital alter center-periphery relations in Kenya? Can peripheral groups have meaningful agency with Chinese state entities? Who determines, and what is considered "local" in local content agreements built into Chinese-financed infrastructure projects? On this Episode, Erik sits down Elisa Gambino to speak about her forthcoming paper entitled: "Chinese participation in Kenyan Transport Infrastructure: Reshaping Power-Geometries" that looks to answer these questions and more by u...
Jul 31, 2020•37 min•Season 2Ep. 32
In this episode, Juliet and Erik sit down with Dr. Xu Liang from Peking University's School of International Studies to talk about his latest research that chronicles historical and modern-day ethnic Chinese garment production in Newcastle, South Africa. Dr. Xu Liang's latest article "Factory, family and industrial frontier: A Socioeconomic study of Chinese clothing firms in Newcastle, South Africa" can be found here. ( link ) Thanks for listening! Follow us on BlueSky @beltandroadpod.blsk.socia...
Jul 02, 2020•51 min•Ep. 31
After a year of record breaking drought, the Mekong River water has level reached a historical low. Continued water stress, which is likely due to climate change, will permanently change the ecology of the region and water stress is already impacting the lives and livelihoods of millions of people across the region dependent upon the river. Proponents of hydrological dam development along the Mekong, which is primarily done by Chinese developers both in China and in downstream countries (Laos, T...
May 29, 2020•1 hr•Ep. 30
On this episode, Erik speaks with Dr. Xiao Han on her latest work co-authored by Michael Webber - “From Chinese dam building in Africa to the Belt and Road Initiative: Assembling infrastructure projects and their linkages" that was published in the 77th volume of the journal of Political Geography. Dr. Xiao Han is a postdoctoral research fellow at University of Melboure’s Centre for Contemporary Chinese Studies. Recommendations: Dr. Xiao Han: 1. Cooking - COVID has all of us anxious, finding tim...
May 13, 2020•39 min•Ep. 29
On this episode, Erik and Juliet speak with Dr. Galen Murton - Assistant Professor at the School of Integrated Sciences at James Madison University - about how China is establishing infrastructure across one of the most unforgiving landscapes in the world. Along the border between Nepal and Tibet, transport and energy infrastructure development are transforming lives and forging a new paradigm of geopolitical engagement between China and its South Asian neighbors. 1) “Trans-Himalayan Power Corri...
Apr 22, 2020•45 min•Ep. 28
In the rapidly evolving context of a world impacted by the novel corona virus, Johan van de Ven discusses travel bans, material aid and donations, and border restrictions between China and Belt and Road Initiative partner countries. He focuses particularly on incidents of anti-Chinese discrimination in Moscow, material assistance to China given by countries from Thailand to Turkey, and stalls in Chinese infrastructural projects abroad. Check out Johan's articles in the Jamestown Foundation's Chi...
Mar 30, 2020•30 min•Ep. 27
Oyuna Baldakova, a PhD Candidate at the Free University of Berlin, shares her research on Chinese investment and Belt and Road developments in Russia (Lake Baikal, Siberia) and Central Asia. She explores how conflicting interests among local elites and domestic political leaders have fueled anti-Chinese sentiments and protests against BRI projects, as well as the implications of China's involvement in Central Asia for European diplomacy in the region. Our discussion is based on her two articles ...
Mar 17, 2020•31 min•Ep. 26
Prof. Dr. Linda Tjia explains the costs and benefits, the links and disconnects, and the domestic and global implications of the China-Europe Freight Train Initiative which connects multiple areas of Western China through Central Asia all the way to Europe. Having worked in the railway sector before her academic career, Linda walks Erik and Juliet through Chongqing business dealings with HP, trade imbalances and "empty return trains" between China and Europe, and the logistical and political cha...
Feb 14, 2020•38 min•Ep. 25
Juliet discusses the book "Last Days of the Mighty Mekong" with author Brian Eyler, Senior Fellow and Director of The Stimson Center’s Southeast Asia Program. Brian shares insights into the development politics of China's (and other countries') hydropower dam construction, the environmental impacts of dams, and the resulting shifts in the day-to-day reality of lives of communities living in along the river. His book is based on over a decade living and traveling along the Mekong River, and docum...
Jan 24, 2020•41 min•Ep. 24
In this episode, Erik talks with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Fellow at NYU Journalism Institute - Lili Pike about China's involvement in Cambodia's energy sector, including an incredible story of a private Chinese furniture manufacturer who bought a closed-down 600MW dirty coal plant from a Chinese SOE and is now moving it piece by piece to Cambodia Read Lili's China Dialogue articles here: 1. Coal plant deemed too polluting for China heads to Cambodia 2. In Cambodia, solar power surges L...
Jan 09, 2020•34 min•Ep. 23
More and more countries have signed on to China's Belt and Road Initiative, but "the increase in political partners has not led to a comparable increase in commercial activity." Cecilia Joy Perez discusses contracting amounts of capital invested along the BRI despite expanding formal participation, which she attributes to shrinking foreign exchange reserves and shifts in the sectors most actively targeted by BRI investments. Based on Cecilia's recent article, " The Belt and Road Initiative Adds ...
Dec 11, 2019•28 min•Ep. 22
Breaking from a dominant focus on national and international scales, Dr. Tim Summers discusses how the Belt and Road works through sub-national institutions, builds upon regional scale development models, and uses provincial trade and political networks within China to expand abroad. Dr. Tim Summers is faculty at the Chinese University of Hong Kong's Centre for China Studies. Check out Tim's articles on the Belt and Road: 1. China’s ‘New Silk Roads’: sub-national regions and networks of global p...
Nov 14, 2019•38 min•Ep. 21
On this episode of the Belt and Road Podcast, Erik Myxter-iino speaks with former MacroPolo Summer Associate Lauren Baker - about her article that looks at differing opinions of governmental and non-governmental elite opinion of Chinese investment in Mozambique. Read Lauren's article "Bridging Perceptions: China in Mozambique " here: https://macropolo.org/analysis/china-mozambique-elite-perceptions/ Recommendations: Lauren - The entire MacroPolo website , and subscribe to their newsletter Erik -...
Nov 03, 2019•36 min•Ep. 20
On episode 19, Dr. Gustavo Oliveira talks about Chinese agribusiness investments in Brazil, the rising importance of the soy trade between the two countries, and the ways domestic and international business interests have fanned the flames of Sinophobia for strategic gains. Dr. Oliveira is a Brazilian scholar and activist and an Assistant Professor of Global & International Studies at University of California, Irvine. Check out Dr. Oliveira's other work on Chinese investments in Brazil and m...
Oct 21, 2019•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 19
In this episode, Erik and Juliet interview Yunnan Chen (PhD candidate at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies) about two Chinese-built railway projects, one in Kenya and one in Ethiopia. The comparison between the two cases provides reflections on how host countries negotiate over debt funding for infrastructural projects, and the logistical and cultural challenges the developers have faced in getting both projects off the ground. Our discussion draws on Yunnan's recent article...
Sep 30, 2019•35 min•Ep. 18
From Vietnam to Myanmar, how does criticism of Chinese investment serve local politics, and how does it distract from broader environmental struggles? The Belt and Road Podcast's new co-host Juliet Lu welcomes Vanessa Lamb and Nga Dao to discuss anti-Chinese sentiment in the hydropower sectors of Myanmar and Vietnam, highlighting some key contrasts in the histories of Chinese investment in each country and the challenges of anti-hydropower activism across the Mekong Region. Their Paper: Percepti...
Sep 19, 2019•36 min•Ep. 17
