From Neoliberalism to Geoeconomics: The Greater Mekong Subregion and the Archaeology of the Belt and Road Initiative in Mainland Southeast Asia

Abstract

China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) markets itself as the re-creation of the ancient Silk Road that linked Europe and Central Asia hundreds of years ago. In mainland Southeast Asia, the archaeology of the BRI is somewhat more recent. Here, the Indochina Peninsula Economic Corridor of the BRI is being built on plans and routes laid down just a few decades ago. In particular, the BRI is integrating with the five subcorridors of the North-South Economic Corridor (NSEC) of the Greater Mekong Subre-152 MADE IN CHINA / 2, 2021

How does the ‘Belt and Road Initiative’ change urbanisation patterns in Southeast Asia?

“…Authors have examined how the BRI intersects the GMS from a political economy perspective (inter al. Soong, 2016;Raymond, 2021). Our research focuses, instead, on how infrastructure projects from several, overlapping sources, are layered on the ground of territories involved in urban transition.…”

Global China as Method

“…A solid understanding of China's politics, society, and foreign policy in historical perspective should be a prerequisite for any analysis of global China's contemporary emergence. For instance, one cannot discuss China's engagements in Southeast Asia without referring to how the BRI has integrated with the Greater Mekong Subregion programme, a minilateral regulatory dialogue comprising the five Mekong states -Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Vietnam, and Thailandand China's Yunnan province and Guangxi autonomous region that began in the 1990s (Raymond, 2021). Nor should one overlook how today's cultural diplomacy and people-to-people initiatives discursively build upon China's legacy of 'Third-Worldism' and engagement with the Global South since the middle of the last century (Galway, 2021).…”