Been a bit quiet of late, am focused on some larger writing projects which should be coming out over the next few months. We did, however, finally launch the Whitehall Paper authored with my colleague Sarah Lain which came out last year at an event at RUSI in London with Mark Field, MP, Minister for Asia at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and James Kynge of the Financial Times. Given it is behind a paywall, I cannot just post the paper here, but it can be found online and if you get in touch with me, I can see what I can do to help. Many thanks to the MacArthur Foundation for their generous support of this work, and as ever, to find more work on this topic, check out China in Central Asia.
Separately, spoke to Eurasianet about China’s rail activity in Central Asia, WikiTribune about ISIS, the Times quoted my book in an article about Hafiz Saeed, and the Financial Times about the Belt and Road.
China’s Eurasian Pivot: The Silk Road Economic Belt
Whitehall Papers, 31 May 2017
China, New Silk Road, International Security Studies, Pacific
China’s growing influence across its western and southern borders is one of the great geopolitical trends of the past decade. With the development of its western domestic regions, Beijing has been drawn into building trade and economic corridors in nearby Central and South Asian countries. Yet these states are home to security risks which China is only now beginning to address.
China’s Eurasian Pivot analyses the country’s growing regional footprint from an economic, security and political perspective. It offers a comprehensive overview of China’s relations with Central and South Asia, showing that the policies now shaped by the concept of the Belt and Road Initiative are ones that China has been implementing in the region for some time.
The paper concludes that China is still developing its approach to the region, which is increasingly being driven by events and external relations. Beijing has stressed that its policies must be successful – both within the region itself and in terms of the impact back home. This highlights the degree to which Beijing feels that it must not fail, and why its approach to the region will continue to be a driving national priority for the next few decades.
Non-RUSI Members and Members with Standard Access
Raffaello Pantucci 