The Belt & Road Initiative: New Driving Force for Regionalisation and Globalisation

Abstract

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is China's idea, but the opportunities it has created belong to the world. Over the past nine years, the BRI has evolved from a concept into tangible actions, from vision to reality, bringing enormous opportunities and benefits to countries worldwide. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine crisis, our world has entered a period of turbulence and transformation, but the BRI cooperation did not come to a halt. It continued to move forward, showing remarkable resilience and vitality. Facing an increasingly complex international environment, will China continue to reform and open up or close the door to the outside world? Prof. Chen Xiangming, the Distinguished Professor of Global Urban Studies and Sociology at Trinity College and a guest professor at Fudan University, China, replied to this question in his recent monograph "The Belt and Road Initiative as Epochal Regionalisation". In this book, he illustrated the contribution of the BRI to regional and global connectivity with a regional focus, pointing out that the BRI is evolving from a single initiative to a worldwide synergy.