Jerónimo Delgado also devotes a chapter to Africa in this book. In the joint paper written with Juliana Andrea Guzmán Cárdenas, “Development Corridors in Africa: Foreign Policy and Regional Integration Strategies in the Global South”, the authors put forward various objectives: 1) understanding the meaning of the category development corridors. 2) Analysing the role of these new routes in the African Union through examples that illustrate and give information about connecting megaprojects effective for a few years now to connect African peoples with the ports as well as with the centre and south of the continent. 3) Laying down the challenges that these initiatives encounter in the region especially those related to security and indebtedness. The authors seek to demonstrate how the corridors in Africa have been used by China, India, Japan as a strategy of foreign policy and as a diplomatic tool that serves their interests, even as the people of the African Union employ them as an instrument of continental integration of connectivity and development. Throughout the analysis they use literature which privileges the African continent and this gives the publication an important added value and the reader thus benefits from little known sources of information and analysis.
Ahmad Saffee uses the discourse method of analysis in order to make a narrative around organisms which greatly influenced public opinion, such as think tanks and communication networks around the China-Pakistan (CPEC) economic corridor, the BRI project with the greatest scope in the Eurasia region. For this, he analyses the role of ISSI (Strategic Studies Institute in Islamabad), a highly influential nonprofit institution created in 1973, instrumental in the making of opinion in the country and in the region on sensitive subjects such as regional security, terrorism, conflict resolution, migrations and functional connectivity. The geoeconomic and geostrategic impact of (CPEC) have strong repercussions on Pakistan and its neighbours and for this reason, the Centre has become a storehouse of information for its academic activity, dissemination, debate and research about thought and opinion building on economic corridors and the leadership of China in its implementation from 2013 till 2018. The results of the quantitative and qualitative analysis are an important reference point for Latin America, a late entrant in the debate, in order that it also know first-hand the way in which Chinese intelligence approaches the regions it deems strategic, the construction of an overarching discourse, the prioritization of Chinese and local interests, the prevailing concerns about public opinion and the various projects to overcome the socio-economic impact of BRI in their country. “China-Pakistan Economic Corridor: A Critical Discourse Analysis: Mapping Public Discourse in Pakistan: The Case Study of Institute of Strategic Studies”, is a valuable effort by the researcher in constructing benchmarks and deciphering the trends in the new integrationist narratives.
In their chapter “Resurgence of South-South Cooperation and China’s Belt and Road Initiative in Asia and Latin America”, Ume Farwa and Ghazanfar Ali Garewal construct a narrative based on Chinese and Pakistani institutional reports, discourses of regional leaders, opinion articles and on discussions during academic seminars, in which the participants are those who decide on the formation of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and promote the think tanks to which the authors are affiliated, a fact that allows them to measure the tenor of the debate in Pakistan. The article analyses the flagship project of the BRI initiative, the China-Pakistan economic corridor and its impact on the much longed for resurgence of a real South-South cooperation, which according to the authors should function within its own conceptual framework, in a spirit of sustainable cooperation in order to achieve national commitment and interinstitutional cooperation of the countries involved and the assurances of a wide and diverse financing at the global, regional and subregional levels.
In his chapter, “Latin America Infrastructure Gap and the Arrival of Chinese Infrastructure Firms: Special Reference to the Argentina Case”, Leonardo E. Stanley, an economist and research associate of the Centre for the Study of State and Society (CEDES), makes a detailed analysis on the manner in which China approached Latin America as part of its politics of internationalisation (go out) of public and private enterprises in a political scenario which allowed it to leverage the consequences of the extended corruption in the continent, the political and financial instability that affected certain countries in the region as well as the institutional vacuum caused by government indifference, international banks and the private sector in the midst of the evident backwardness of infrastructure and functional connectivity. The researcher takes recourse to relevant primary sources (reports of multilateral agencies, governments, discourses of political leaders, statistics, and experts’ analysis in order to explain the vectors and incentives that enter the reckoning of the government and Chinese companies to make Latin America a strategic partner), to explain the nature of Chinese companies and their particular forms of financing and the way in which they adapt to the business environment of the region.
Paraguayan researcher Gustavo Cardozo, in his chapter “El Mercosur en la búsqueda de Asia Pacífico”, (Mercosur in the Search for the Asia Pacific), Paraguayan researcher Gustavo Cardozo uses a regional South American approach. He views the China BRI project in the framework of a clearer connection between the Pacific Alliance (PA) and the Common Market of the South (Mercosur) as they are apt zones for the development of bioceanic corridors and for their relevance and potential in port and logistical matters necessary for strategic sectors such as mining. There are hardly any studies on the Chinese phenomenon and its presence in South America from a regional perspective, and so Cardoso uses studies and primary source information for this analysis produced by these two regional authorities as well as analysis done by multilateral bodies.
Kelly Arévalo, a Colombian researcher affiliated to the Centre of Studies on Contemporary India of the Externado University of Colombia (CESICAM), writes on the “Del fortalecimiento de las fronteras a la conectividad: lecciones para el Sur de Asia y América del Sur” (Strengthening of the Borders to Connectivity: Lessons for South Asia and South America), a comparative analysis in which she privileges the discipline of geography, which leads us to interpret the territory and functional geography as that which explains the new dynamics of interdependence, economic development, regional integration and the exercise of power. From the geographical space of South Asia, she highlights the limitations in connectivity and the consequences on trade and regional cohesion, the development possibilities that can open up corridors identified by regional groups such as SAARC more than a decade ago and India’s responsibility in overcoming these obstacles. For South America, Arevalo presents a similar situation: a precarious physical connectivity, unfinished projects, a weakening of regional structures which result in a slow internationalization, a marginalization of global supply chains and a slow rhythm movement in social cohesion.
Pío García, researcher and professor at the Externado University of Colombia takes a regional, multipolar and critical approach to the phenomenon of the economic corridors in South East Asia. Through an analysis of recent geopolitical history, he explains how the connectivity strategy of the region is also influenced by players different from China, especially India and Japan, nations which have different infrastructure solutions and which besides facilitating the interconnectivity in the region, also introduce a balance of power. In his article “El sudeste asiático en las nuevas rutas transcontinentales: Asean” (South East Asia in the New