Overview

China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), commonly called the New Silk Road, is a huge infrastructure project currently revitalising or creating new trading routes and large developments across the globe. It is estimated to cost up to US$8 trillion and impact more than 65% of the world’s population. This book explores the unequal ways this controversial project is altering livelihoods, places and the environment. From road building projects in Nairobi to grassroots environmental activism in Thailand, researchers from the Global North and South analyse the real-world impacts of this unprecedented project, bringing together critical geography and political ecology approaches.

Full Product Details

Author:   Ratchada Arpornsilp (The Australian National University) ,  Orlando Woods (Singapore Management University) ,  Caixia Mao (Columbia University) ,  Patrick Bond (University of KwaZulu-Natal)
Publisher:   Bristol University Press
Imprint:   Bristol University Press
ISBN:  

9781529240641

ISBN 10:   1529240646
Pages:   272
Publication Date:   29 September 2025
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Forthcoming
Availability:   Not yet available  
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Table of Contents

Introduction: The World Transformed: Grounding the Belt and Road Initiative - Elia Apostolopoulou, Han Cheng, Jonathan Silver and Alan Wiig 1. The Contested Coal-Fired Power in the Belt and Road Initiative: Indonesia as a Case Study - Bowen Gu 2. Dynamics of Grassroots Collectivism in Thailand’s Special Economic Zones: Cases of Natural Resource Conflicts Within the Belt and Road Initiative - Ratchada Arpornsilp 3. Railways of Hope, Railways of Conflicts: Governance of the Domestic Environmental Impacts of a Belt and Road Project - Xiaofeng Liu 4. A Debt to Whom? The Nature Questions in Sino-Sri Lankan Development Narratives - Orlando Woods, Kanchana Ruwanpura, Loritta Chan and Barnabas Mah 5. Waiting, Acceleration, Stabilisation: Polychronic Temporalities as Drivers of a Large-Scale Chinese Green Technology Project in Thuringia, Eastern Germany - Hannes Langguth 6. Silk Road on Ice: Extractivism, Climate Change, and Resistances - Ksenija Hanaček 7. Donor Competition, Local Agency, and Contingency: Jakarta-Bandung High-Speed Railway in Indonesia - Caixia Mao 8. A Postcolonial Belt and Road Initiative? Dependency, Development, and Geopolitics in China-Latin America Relations - Simone Vegliò 9. The Elusive Rainbow at the End of the Belt and Road: Chinese Investment, Finance and Trade Controversies in Southern Africa - Patrick Bond 10. Beyond the Logistical Monolith: Multiplicity and Differentiation Along the Adriatic Corridor - Francesca Governa, Leonardo Ramondetti, Astrid Safina, Angelo Sampieri and Alberto Valz Gris 11. Capitalizing on the Logistical Future: Discounting Uncertainty in the Georgian Belt and Road Initiative - Evelina Gambino 12. Infrastructure-Led Development, Urban Transformation, and Inequality in China’s Belt and Road Initiative: A Marxist Postcolonial Geographies Analysis - Elia Apostolopoulou Afterword: The Material Futures of the Belt and Road Initiative - Elia Apostolopoulou, Han Cheng, Jonathan Silver and Alan Wiig

Reviews

'Bringing together interdisciplinary perspectives, this timely collection reveals how Belt and Road Initiative projects transform ecologies, territories, and power relations—essential reading for scholars and practitioners of infrastructure, development, human geography and political ecology.' Seth Schindler, University of Manchester 'Traversing infrastructural forms, this book offers a distinctly global, yet grounded, analysis of the material and contested transformations of the Belt and Road Initiative as it produces uneven geographies and restructures economies and geopolitics from the ground up.' Sophie Webber, The University of Sydney 'This is an intensely geographical book, in all of the best ways. Grounded in specific places, it examines the many different ways in which the multiscalar project of the Belt and Road Initiative touches down, and is shaped and reshaped in practice. It is essential reading for anyone trying to understand the realities of the Belt and Road Initiative.' Emma Mawdsley, University of Cambridge

Author Information

Elia Apostolopoulou is Associate Professor at Imperial College London. Han Cheng is Visiting Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science. Jonathan Silver is Deputy Director and Senior Research Fellow at the University of Sheffield. Alan Wiig is Associate Professor at the University of Florida.

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