Theorising from the Belt and Road Initiative (一带一路)

Abstract

As frame for the set that follows, this article first considers the range of theoretical interpretations of China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Our focus, however, is on a related yet distinct set of questions. Rather than theorising BRI per se, we approach BRI as a source of theoretical implications and reflection – asking what it signals and implies for wider cultural, economic, political, social and urban theories, and for histories of and afterlives of imperial geopolitics.