Abstract
Peter Rimmer’s book is on China’s One Belt, One Road, or, as the Chinese government has rephrased the term in English, the ‘Belt and Road Initiative’ (hereafter BRI). China’s insistence on a recognizable branding of the BRI illustrates the only aspect of this gigantic conglomeration of projects that is tangible: it is an iteration of Chinese interests – companies’ business plans, the country’s economic strategic goals, and the leadership’s foreign policy vision. Since the announcement in 2013, the initiative’s evolution has been oscillating between these three main driving forces, creating a fluidity that makes the BRI difficult to define and to relate it to current global affairs.
Meanwhile, BRI-related publications have emerged as a new field of both China studies and international relations studies, with authors pursuing a variety of perspectives to grasp the BRI’s effects on participating countries and the international community as a whole. Peter Rimmer adds a geographical angle, centring his examination on the geologistics and the imagination of the physical connections arising from BRI projects.
This is a valid approach; and Rimmer also points to two other important aspects that this geologistics perspective reveals. First, the commencement of many Chinese projects that are now part of the BRI predate the official announcement of the initiative. Second, he includes the political and logistical responses of host countries and their regional partners to Chinese projects. Both the legacy of many projects and regional alternatives are important for understanding the initiative’s dynamics, prospects, and influence on international affairs.
Obviously, Rimmer’s account can only provide a snapshot of the developments at the end of the second decade of the 21st century. Nonetheless, the book forms a valuable point of departure for further research. The book’s main contribution is the illustration of the global nature of the BRI that involves literally all continents as well as difficulties and responses that might affect the pursuit of the initiative’s projects in the future. Thus, with its thought-provoking maps and figures it provides a comprehensive overview of the transcontinental connections that the BRI seeks to establish. It becomes clear that activities under the BRI seek either to upend the logistics, which were established during colonial times, or to extend regional bonds through planned continent-wide routes.
Based on the acknowledgement of the importance of a well-functioning logistics sector for China’s recent internal development, Rimmer makes the case for putting geologistics at the heart of assessing the BRI. Thus, he uses geologistics as ‘a framework for considering its global implications’ (p. ix). The first chapter of the book explains how the BRI’s land-based and maritime activities fit into this framework. For the former, the author groups the projects into land bridges, economic corridors, and dry ports; and for the latter he studies blue economic passages, economic circles, and seaport hubs. Chapter 2 summarizes the evolution of the BRI, relating China’s domestic experiences with developing a modern logistics sector to the leadership’s foreign policy goals. Chapters 3 and 4 consider the land-based transport infrastructure in Eurasia. In Chapters 5 to 8, Rimmer discusses the development of seaborne global connections. Chapter 9 concludes with a brief evaluation of the first five years of the BRI.
With its comprehensive overview of the BRI’s global extent, the book is a primer for students of China’s foreign economic policy. It is a valuable guide for engaging in the study of global and regional developments that the initiative has instigated. It helps to formulate in-depth questions for further research on the agency of host countries, in light of various examples of reluctant participation in BRI projects and increased activity to pursue competing undertakings.
Since Rimmer assesses both the BRI’s evolution as well as political and logistic responses in the targeted regions, the book provides an essential read for understanding how extensive, transnational transport routes under the initiative reconstitute the geographic arena for China’s policymakers. Scholars of international relations and China’s role in international affairs will find the overview of the BRI and its clear maps useful. Students of India’s relations with China will discover interesting threads that can inspire further research, because many of the initiative’s land-based corridors and maritime activities are evolving in the vicinity of India.
The book ends with a timely reminder of the importance of new technologies for establishing modern transport infrastructure and its growing effect on international relations. The efforts of Huawei Marine Telecommunications to link coastal cities in transoceanic fibre-optic networks serve as an example for new technologies that students of international relations and China’s role in the world should follow closely to understand the real impact of the BRI and its political ramifications.