Legal Aspects of China's Belt and Road Initiative: A Preliminary Assessment
No Thumbnail Available
Date
2018-10
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Faculty of Law, South East University, Dhaka, Bangladesh
Abstract
China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is a global and highly ambitious infrastructural, trade and investment as well as economic development initiative of epic proportions. It is spearheaded and unwritten by PRC China. It strategically and seamlessly connects China in the epicentre with her South, South-east and Central Asian, Middle-eastern, African and European countries as well as Mongolia, Eastern and the rest of Russia. The “Belt” covers a network of overland road and rail routes, oil and natural gas pipelines as well as other infrastructure projects that will span out from Xi’an in central China across Central Asia and ultimately reaching as far away as Moscow, Rotterdam, and Venice. The belt also covers planned business development corridors running far and wide-- along the major Eurasian Land Bridges, through China-Mongolia-Russia, China Central and West Asia, China-Indochina Peninsula, China-Pakistan, and Bangladesh China-India-Myanmar trade/economic corridors. The “Road”, on the other hand, is its maritime counterpart-- the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road -- a network of planned ports and other coastal infrastructure projects that dot the map from South and Southeast Asia to East Africa and the northern Mediterranean Sea. The southern maritime trade routes reach as far as the Oceanic countries in the Pacific Ocean. The BRI’s recent expansion incorporates also the Artic sea routes (Ice Silk Road or One Ring). The focus of this article is more on the salient features of BRI with emphasis on the legal aspects of thereof.
Description
Keywords
Belt and Road Initiative;, Ice Silk Road, Economic Development Corridors, Infrastructure Development, Public-Private Partnerships
Citation
Volume: 02, Issue: 01. January-December, 2018