Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures and Tables
- Preface
- Abbreviations
- 1 Introduction: Informal exchanges and contending connectivity along the shadow silk roads
- 2 Fragmented sovereignty and unregulated flows: The Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar corridor
- 3 In and out of the shadows: Pakistan-China trade across the Karakoram Mountains
- 4 Circulations in shadow corridors: Connectivity in the Northern Bay of Bengal
- 5 Past and present: Shadows of the China-Ladakh-Pakistan routes
- 6 Formal versus informal practices: Trade of medicinal and aromatic plants via Trans- Himalayan Silk Road
- 7 Formal versus informal Chinese presence: The underbelly of hope in the Western Balkans
- 8 State approaches to non-state interactions: Cross-border flows in Xinjiang and Kazakhstan
- 9 Integration in post-Soviet Central Asia: Shadow-economy practices and the cross-Eurasian flow of commodities
- 10 In the shadow of constructed borderlands: China’s One Belt One Road and European economic governance
- 11 High-end globalization and low-end globalization: African traders across Afro-Asia
- Index
- Publications / Global Asia
2 - Fragmented sovereignty and unregulated flows: The Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar corridor
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 November 2020
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures and Tables
- Preface
- Abbreviations
- 1 Introduction: Informal exchanges and contending connectivity along the shadow silk roads
- 2 Fragmented sovereignty and unregulated flows: The Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar corridor
- 3 In and out of the shadows: Pakistan-China trade across the Karakoram Mountains
- 4 Circulations in shadow corridors: Connectivity in the Northern Bay of Bengal
- 5 Past and present: Shadows of the China-Ladakh-Pakistan routes
- 6 Formal versus informal practices: Trade of medicinal and aromatic plants via Trans- Himalayan Silk Road
- 7 Formal versus informal Chinese presence: The underbelly of hope in the Western Balkans
- 8 State approaches to non-state interactions: Cross-border flows in Xinjiang and Kazakhstan
- 9 Integration in post-Soviet Central Asia: Shadow-economy practices and the cross-Eurasian flow of commodities
- 10 In the shadow of constructed borderlands: China’s One Belt One Road and European economic governance
- 11 High-end globalization and low-end globalization: African traders across Afro-Asia
- Index
- Publications / Global Asia
Summary
Abstract
The concept of the Silk Road has recently been repackaged as a China-led inter-state enterprise that will lead to ‘a win-win attempt for all’. This technocratic utopia of superior infrastructure, smooth transport routes, and boosted trade should be challenged, because it ignores the countless flows and networks across Eurasia that states fail to control. The zone connecting China to India across Myanmar and Bangladesh exemplifies the obstacles that the broader scheme is generally likely to face: distrust, implementation deficits, fragmented sovereignty, sensitive spaces, and unregulated cross-border flows. In this chapter, it is argued that the plan, far from offering benign progress for all, will damage many livelihoods and lead to adverse political, environmental, and security outcomes.
Keywords: One Belt One Road, Belt and Road Initiative, BCIM corridor, aspiring sovereigns, social connectivity, India-China corridor
Introduction
Policymakers across Asia have become extremely excited about a novel initiative, OBOR (One Belt One Road). Launched by the People's Republic of China in 2013, the plan is also known as BRI (Belt and Road Initiative), or the New Silk Road. It promotes economic integration between China and the rest of Eurasia through investments in infrastructure, increased trade, and cultural exchange (Ngo and Hung, this volume). Playing on the ancient and nostalgic notion of the Silk Road, its publicity is full of romantic images of camel trains crossing deserts and ancient trade vessels braving the high seas (for example, Arif, 2013; China Economic Net, 2015; Gateway to Guangdong, 2015; Mao, 2015; Cheung and Lee, 2017; Silk Road Fund, 2017). The OBOR initiative signifies benign overland connectivity between China, Central Asia, West Asia, and Europe (the Silk Road Economic Belt) and maritime connectivity between China, Southeast Asia, South Asia, Northeast Africa, and Europe (the Maritime Silk Road).
At first sight, this may appear to be simply a 21st-century repackaging of ancient trade routes – now without caravans and junks but with railroads, highways, oil and gas pipelines, state-of-the-art seaports, giant container ships, and an ‘e-Silk Road’ (Silk Road Chamber of International Commerce, 2017).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Shadow Exchanges along the New Silk Roads , pp. 37 - 74Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2020