The Belt and Road City

An exploration of how China’s Belt and Road Initiative seeks to reshape international order, and has catalyzed a new era of infrastructural geopolitics

Over the past decade China has put infrastructural and urban development at the heart of a strategy aimed at nothing less than the transformation of international order. The Belt and Road Initiative, which seeks to revitalize and reconnect the ancient Silk Roads that linked much of the world before the rise of the West, is an attempt to place China at the center of this new international order, one shaped by Chinese power, norms, and values. It seeks to do so, in part, by shaping our shared urban future.

Simon Curtis and Ian Klaus explore how China’s specific investments in urban development—cities, roads, railways, ports, digital and energy connectivity—are directly linked to its foreign policy goals. Curtis and Klaus examine the implications of these developments as they evolve across this vast region.

The distinctive model of international order and urban life emerging with the rise of Chinese power and influence offers a potential rival to that which accompanied the rise and zenith of Western power, marking a new age of infrastructural geopolitics and Great Power competition.