Wong MNC Center Publications and Sponsored Publications

Sino-Caribbean Relations in a Changing Geopolitical Sea

Scott MacDonald
December 1, 2019
This article focuses on Chinese-Caribbean relations, which have been marked in the early twenty-first century by an increase in bilateral trade and Chinese foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows to the region. The relationship has been generally positive for both sides. However, at the same time, there are areas of friction...

“Myanmar’s Role in China’s Maritime Silk Road Initiative”

J. Mohan Malik
May 1, 2018
This article argues that the origins and theoretical underpinnings of Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative can actually be traced back to the mid-1980s, that is, almost three decades before the official media unveiled the Maritime Silk Road Initiative (MSRI). It examines the changing role of Myanmar in China’s grand...

“Regional Responses to China’s Maritime Silk Road Initiative in Southeast Asia”

Shaofeng Chen
May 1, 2018
Southeast Asia has sat atop China’s Maritime Silk Road Initiative (MSRI). By and large, most Southeast Asian countries hailed China’s MSRI, but their responses to it have some variances. The article aims to analyze why they have differing responses. It contends that the primary determinant is changing domestic politics, specifically,...

“China’s Maritime Silk Road Initiative (MSRI) and Southeast Asia: A Chinese ‘pond’ not ‘lake’ in the Works”

Jean-Marc F. Blanchard
June 2, 2019
There is raging speculation about the potential implications of China’s One Belt, One Road (OBOR)/Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) for the global order, spheres of influence and the positions of extra-regional powers. Much commentary is overly broad and lacks a clear and systematic method for examining OBOR/BRI’s future consequences. Focusing...

China’s Maritime Silk Road Initiative and South Asia: A Political Economic Analysis of its Purposes, Perils, and Promise

Jean-Marc F. Blanchard
November 30, 2017
This book brings together a diverse range of responses to China’s Marine Silk Road Initiative, which proposes to redraw the map of Asia, particularly South Asia. China’s 21st Century Maritime Silk Road Initiative (MSRI) is a massive scheme to connect wide swaths of East, Southeast, South, and West Asia through a dense...

India’s Economic and Strategic Perceptions of China’s Maritime Silk Road Initiative

Amitendu Palit
April 1, 2017
The Maritime Silk Road Initiative (MSRI) is a part of China’s experiment in scaling up economic corridors across vast swathes of diverse economic geographies. China’s involvement in a large number of ongoing transport corridor projects has encouraged it to embark on the most ambitious of them all till date. The...

Silk Roads and Strings of Pearls: The Strategic Geography of China’s New Pathways in the Indian Ocean

David Brewster
April 1, 2017
Control over access to the Indian Ocean is often seen through a highly securitised lens. Strategic actors have long sought to use geographical constraints to maintain the region as a relatively enclosed strategic space. It has only a few narrow maritime entrance points and the littoral is not well connected...

Probing China’s Twenty-First-Century Maritime Silk Road Initiative (MSRI): An Examination of MSRI Narratives

Jean-Marc F. Blanchard
April 1, 2017
This article reviews the literature on China’s twenty-first-century Maritime Silk Road initiative (MSRI) to highlight the narratives surrounding it, its central features, its potential objectives, and the challenges affecting its implementation. It demonstrates that there are numerous political and economic narratives about the MSRI. It further indicates Beijing’s aims to...

The Geopolitics of China’s Maritime Silk Road Initiative

Jean-Marc F. Blanchard and Colin Flint
April 1, 2017
China’s “One Belt, One Road” project is comprised of two components: the Maritime Silk Road Initiative (MSRI) and the Silk Road Economic Belt (SREB)—that were announced separately in 2013. Each component has the potential to transform the global geopolitical landscape through the construction of interrelated infrastructure projects including ports, highways,...

Chinese Investment in Brazil: Can It Match the Relevance of Bilateral Trade?

José Augusto Guilhon Albuquerque and Luís Afonso Fernandes Lima
December 1, 2016
In this article we explore the political economy of Chinese outward foreign direct investment (COFDI) in Brazil, and the impact of investment and other economic links on Brazilian foreign policy toward China. The warming of Brazil’s relations with China after 2003 had much to do with the perceptions of then...