2.Situating Central Asia in BRI
2.1.Why Central Asia is important for BRI?
2.2.Main BRI projects in Central Asia
2.3.The New Eurasian Land Bridge
3.Economic corridor China - Central Asia - Western Asia
3.1.Response from Central Asia: case of Kazakhstan
12. TURKEY AND THE BELT AND ROAD INITIATIVE
Gökhan Tekir
2.Turkey’s Domestic Railway Lines
3.Marmaray and Yavuz Sultan Selim Bridge
4.The Turkish Maritime Leg of the Belt and Road
5.Turkey’s Role in Civilizational Connectivity
6.Challenges to Turkey’s Participation in the Belt and Road Initiative
6.1.Volatility in the Infrastructure Sector
13. BELT & ROAD INITIATIVE Y SU SIGNIFICADO GEOPOLÍTICO PARA CHINA Y ASIA CENTRAL
Diana Andrea Gómez
1.1La tecnología rebasa la geografía
2.Importancia geopolítica de BRI
2.1.BRI en perspectiva doméstica
2.2.BRI en perspectiva regional: el rol de Asia central
3.Grandes desafíos generados por BRI en perspectiva global
3.1.El rol central de las ciudades
Conclusiones y recomendaciones
REFLEXIONES FINALES E INVITACIÓN A LA ACADEMIA
Soraya Caro Vargas
Global geopolitics has shifted dramatically over the last thirty years. After the vanishing expectations of a unipolar international system led by the United States, China has gained an increasingly dominant role in areas as innovative as quantum computing, robotics and artificial intelligence.
In the ‘non-digital’ dimension, the eastern superpower has made gigantic investments in its Belt and Road Initiative, which include the development of a massive network of highways, industrial centers, harbors, pipelines and bridges, among many other works of infrastructure. These investments allow for the connection of more than 60 countries worldwide, guaranteeing China’s energetic security, easier conditions for trading goods and services and, perhaps more importantly, a significant influence in the political and economic events of the world.
States with political regimes as diverse as those of Russia and India are part of this growing network; in various cases, in exchange for the benefits associated with being part of it, major concessions were made. By way of illustration, Sri Lanka and Pakistan, among others, given their lack of capacity to pay for some of the works, have agreed to forfeit control of specific areas of their territories.
The new game that arises under these circumstances calls for creativity in devising new models of cooperation between states, companies, citizens and the like. That is, traditional forms of association between rich and poor countries, for instance, must be thought of in a different format: the profits derived from the relationship must be clearly evident to all the actors. Similarly, historical advantages associated with geographical conditions that were explained by so-called ‘spheres of influence’, must be revisited, as new forms of connectivity – both physical and digital – are shifting at a speed not seen before.
South-south cooperation, as well as the exchange of knowledge and experience between actors who have not traditionally been leaders in their fields, is expected to play an increasingly critical role in the years to come. As in the case of concessions in sovereignty, the nature and breadth of the nation state could also be in question,