Podcasts

Back

China's Silk Road Initiative

12
May 2016
Virginia Marantidou 
Related topics: 

This podcast is performed by Virginia Marantidou. This briefing will focus on China’s new investment strategy in Eurasia, which consists of two components, the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, also known in Chinese parlance as the “One Belt, one Road” (OBOR). In 2013, Chinese president Xi Jinping articulated a grand strategic vision of strengthening interconnectivity and boosting trade across Eurasia through physical infrastructure, specifically by building roads, ports, railways, and highways. According to Chinese plans and maps the Silk Road Economic Belt will cover the geographic region from China’s western provinces all the way through Central Asia, ending in Central and Eastern Europe, while its maritime twin, starts from the Chinese eastern coastal areas, traverses the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean all the way into the Mediterranean with final destination Southern Europe.
Following this announcement the Chinese government put forward schemes of materializing these mega- projects and established the Asian Infrastructure Investment bank (AIIB) and the Silk Road Fund in an effort to channel funds towards these projects.
However, what is the significance of these projects, why should they concern us and why so much attention in the U.S., Europe, and around the world has been recently focused on this issue?
Although this is not an entirely new strategy but mostly the evolution of China’s “going out” strategy of the early 2000s, it does reveal a transformation in China’s foreign policy which inevitably will have a wider impact not only on Eurasia but on a global scale. The presentation will address these key issues of China’s more active economic policy abroad and its strategic implications.

RELATED CONTENT

  • October 3, 2025
    In this episode, we explore Africa’s industrial challenges and opportunities, showing how AfCFTA-driven integration, green sectors, and inclusive policies for women, youth, and SMEs can foster sustainable growth, resilience, and domestic value capture. ...
  • Authors
    October 3, 2025
    Global economic growth has been more resilient than expected, as the artificial intelligence-led growth seems to be compensating for the negative impacts of trade conflicts. Overstretched asset values and slowing jobs growth may be signaling that the balanced crossing of those two paths will be challenged. ...
  • September 23, 2025
    في هذا العدد من برنامجنا، نسلّط الضوء على موقع المغرب الاستراتيجي الذي يجعله حلقة وصل بين الأطلسي والمتوسط، ودوره المتصاعد في التجارة الدولية والاقتصاد البحري. نناقش التحديات والفرص التي تطرحها هذه الدينامية، من تطوير البنية التحتية وتأهيل الكفاءات، إلى استكشاف آفاق الاقتصاد الأزرق وضما...
  • September 8, 2025
    In this episode, we explore how today’s trade regime shapes inequality through a Southern lens. The conversation sheds light on blind spots in mainstream debates, the resurgence of industrial policy in the North, and the tools Southern countries need to reclaim policy space within globa...
  • Authors
    September 3, 2025
    Estimates based on last year’s U.S. imports, by Maia G. Crook (from JPMorgan) indicate that the average effective U.S. tariff rate is currently 16%, and is expected to rise to 20% by the end of 2025. This represents an increase from 13% mid-year and 2.3% in 2024 (Figure 1). Effective tariff rates are a measure of the degree of protection a tariff structure offers to the value added provided by each sector to a country’s final product, taking into account both the tax on final g ...
  • August 22, 2025
    History offers ample instances in which the veneer of fairness in international relations has worn away, revealing with unsentimental clarity the crude mechanics of power. The contemporary global trade architecture, promoted for decades by the United States as a virtuous system of open markets, a rules-based order, and reciprocal gains, is merely the latest in a long lineage of such illusions. ...
  • August 22, 2025
    This episode explores the opportunities and challenges of achieving deeper economic integration under the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). We discuss the potential for boosting intra-African trade, industrialization, and investment flows. The conversation highlights the nee...
  • Authors
    August 19, 2025
    The multilateral, rule-based trading system underpinned by the World Trade Organization (WTO) has been undermined by the unilateral imposition of U.S. tariffs. Crucially, the foundational principle of non-discrimination among WTO members has been abandoned. While many countries have attempted to negotiate with the U.S. to resolve tariff disputes, they have simultaneously sought to deepen trade ties with each other through plurilateral and regi ...