Workshop & Public Panel:
Towards a New Global Order?
Ambitions, Scope and Challenges of China’s Belt and Road Initiative
Time: June 19, 2019, 13:00-18:15
Venue: Tagungs- und Veranstaltungshaus Alte Mensa, Wilhelmsplatz 3, 37073 Göttingen
More than five years after its initial launch, China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has become the world’s most intensely debated developmental project. As a new development strategy, the BRI aims to fund and build infrastructure in more than 70 countries. It presents opportunities but also challenges for the affected economies in Southeast and Central Asia, Europe and Africa. At the same time, the BRI has also become the centerpiece of China’s foreign policy strategy, reshaping China’s position in international politics and its diplomatic relations with world.
Against this background, the workshop “Towards a New Global Order? Ambitions, Scope and Challenges of China’s Belt and Road Initiative” explores the complex entanglements between the BRI and China’s changing role in the global political economy: How to assess the motives and challenges of the BRI as a new development strategy in the context of slowing growth rates and overcapacity problems in the Chinese economy? What are the responses to the BRI by stakeholders in Southeast Asia, Central Asia and Europe? And what are the implications of the BRI for international relations and China’s ascent to a global superpower?
Program
| 13:00-13:30 | Welcome Address: Dominic Sachsenmaier (Göttingen) |
| 13:30-15:00 | Session 1: The development strategy of China’s BRI: Ambitions, scope and challenges |
| Chair: Katja Pessl (Göttingen)Speakers:
1. Uwe Hoering (Stiftung Asienhaus): The Expansion of the Developmental State 2. Liang-Kung Yen (National Chengchi University): Assessing Demand and Progress in China’s Belt and Road Initiative: A Global Governance Perspective 3.Bart Dessein (Ghent): The BRI and Central Asia from a historical perspective |
|
| 15:00-15:15 | Coffee Break |
| 15:15-16:45 | Session 2: Regional implications and responses to China’s BRI |
| Chair: Bart Dessein (Ghent)Speakers:
1. Yu Jie (LSE): Money and Might: The uneasy relations between China and Southeast Asia with many belts and roads 2. Fabienne Bossuyt (Ghent): Connecting Eurasia: Is cooperation between the EU, China and Russia in Central Asia possible? 3. Frank Gaenssmantel (Groningen): Seizing the unseizable – the EU and the Belt and Road Initiative |
|
| 16:45-17:00 | Coffee Break |
| 17:00-18:30 | Panel Discussion: China’s Belt and Road Initiative – The Emergence of a New Global Order? |
| Moderator: Maria Danilovich (Uppsala)Panelists: Fabienne Bossuyt (Ghent), Sebastian Harnisch (Heidelberg), Uwe Hoering (Asienhaus), Yu Jie (LSE) Liang-Kung Yen (National Chengchi University) | |
| 18:30 | Workshop Dinner |
Organizers:
Centre for Modern East Asian Studies & the U4 Network (Ghent University, University of Groningen, Uppsala University, University of Göttingen),
Department of East Asian Studies (University of Göttingen)
Contact:
Daniel Fuchs daniel.fuchs@uni-goettingen.de