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“…The combined effects of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the economic crisis in Russia in the early 1990's provided a segue for China to tap into the natural resources and commodities of the newly emerging Central Asian nations and secure borders [25]. Because government structures and thus political ramifications vary from country to country in Central Asia, it is difficult to completely view the potential impacts of the BRI as a monolith in this region.…”
Section: Socioeconomic Issuesmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…For example, Kyrgyzstan serves as a transit hub and has received Chinese investments for infrastructure development and extraction of natural resources, particularly gold mining [7]. Tajikistan now relies heavily on inexpensive goods from China as well as Chinese investments in infrastructure, hydropower, cement production, and mining, while Afghanistan is targeted for copper mining and oil exploration [7,25]. All of these road networks are targeted for future expansion under the BRI.…”
Section: Socioeconomic Issuesmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Since the 1990's exports from Uyghur forced-labor camps in the Xinjiang region, particularly via the 'cotton supply chain' [31] have been pouring into and transiting through Central Asia, constituting another potential disease vector, not to mention human rights abuses. Another often overlooked development is the expansion of military exercises that China is conducting in Central Asia-the most of anywhere in the world [25]. Along the poorly maintained Pamir Highway (M51), which connects into western China, large trucks hauling Chinese goods are increasingly pouring through Tajikistan deteriorating and often blocking the road and causing noise and dust pollution in Pamir communities.…”
Central Asia is a vital link in the huge Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) that follows much of the ancient Silk Road routes in this region. Other than the economic expansion and trade benefits associated with this complex infrastructure system, little is known about the many of the exogenous issues and direct environmental and socioeconomic impacts surrounding the BRI in Central Asia. This opinion paper takes a sharper look at some of these externalities and potential effects through a sustainability lens. Major environmental concerns focus on the proliferation of spur roads that will develop off upgraded or new Belt Roads to promote exploitation of natural resources. Steep, high-elevation landscapes in the Pamirs and Tien Shan pose problems for road location and construction, and the history of road building in less formidable terrain in Yunnan, China is unsustainable, leading to epic landslide and gully erosion, which degrade river systems. Furthermore, many socioeconomic issues may arise like debt dependencies of poor countries, spread of communicable diseases into remote communities, depletion of mineral resources, and implicit compliance with pro-China policies. While some of the poorer post-Soviet nations can reap short-term benefits from BRI plans, it is urged that they assess the long-term sustainability of BRI development and play an active role in determining the conditions for implementation.
“…The combined effects of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the economic crisis in Russia in the early 1990's provided a segue for China to tap into the natural resources and commodities of the newly emerging Central Asian nations and secure borders [25]. Because government structures and thus political ramifications vary from country to country in Central Asia, it is difficult to completely view the potential impacts of the BRI as a monolith in this region.…”
Section: Socioeconomic Issuesmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…For example, Kyrgyzstan serves as a transit hub and has received Chinese investments for infrastructure development and extraction of natural resources, particularly gold mining [7]. Tajikistan now relies heavily on inexpensive goods from China as well as Chinese investments in infrastructure, hydropower, cement production, and mining, while Afghanistan is targeted for copper mining and oil exploration [7,25]. All of these road networks are targeted for future expansion under the BRI.…”
Section: Socioeconomic Issuesmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Since the 1990's exports from Uyghur forced-labor camps in the Xinjiang region, particularly via the 'cotton supply chain' [31] have been pouring into and transiting through Central Asia, constituting another potential disease vector, not to mention human rights abuses. Another often overlooked development is the expansion of military exercises that China is conducting in Central Asia-the most of anywhere in the world [25]. Along the poorly maintained Pamir Highway (M51), which connects into western China, large trucks hauling Chinese goods are increasingly pouring through Tajikistan deteriorating and often blocking the road and causing noise and dust pollution in Pamir communities.…”
Central Asia is a vital link in the huge Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) that follows much of the ancient Silk Road routes in this region. Other than the economic expansion and trade benefits associated with this complex infrastructure system, little is known about the many of the exogenous issues and direct environmental and socioeconomic impacts surrounding the BRI in Central Asia. This opinion paper takes a sharper look at some of these externalities and potential effects through a sustainability lens. Major environmental concerns focus on the proliferation of spur roads that will develop off upgraded or new Belt Roads to promote exploitation of natural resources. Steep, high-elevation landscapes in the Pamirs and Tien Shan pose problems for road location and construction, and the history of road building in less formidable terrain in Yunnan, China is unsustainable, leading to epic landslide and gully erosion, which degrade river systems. Furthermore, many socioeconomic issues may arise like debt dependencies of poor countries, spread of communicable diseases into remote communities, depletion of mineral resources, and implicit compliance with pro-China policies. While some of the poorer post-Soviet nations can reap short-term benefits from BRI plans, it is urged that they assess the long-term sustainability of BRI development and play an active role in determining the conditions for implementation.
“…These countries can be categorized as key countries -relations with Beijing. These four countries have been key in expanding the BRI Program across Southeast Asia [32]. Indonesia as a trajectory country, is tested whether it will be able to benefit from this position or only as an observer of the country's trade traffic.…”
Indonesia and Australia are two neighboring countries with different cultural characteristics and patterns of international relations. This research aims to formulate a pattern of strategic partnerships between Indonesia and Australia in the field of defense cooperation. Through the symbolic interactional approach, the researcher saw actors' behavior between countries by collecting data from various sources; online newspapers, scientific articles, interviews, and discussions illustrated the pattern of defense cooperation between Indonesia and Australia at three levels. At the multilateral level, the relationship between Australia and Indonesia looks rather difficult to reciprocate. At the regional level, especially in the Southeast Asia region, Indonesia and Australia cooperation in non-binding control, and on the bilateral level Indonesia and Australia as equal partners are equally committed to mutual control. Free and Open Indo-Pacific strengthens Indonesia-Australia cooperation in the trade sector. An agreement has been built and ratified into the Indonesia-Australia Law comprehensive economic partnership agreement (IA-CEPA). Thus the internal politics of the alliance is very dynamic. On the one hand, the United States strengthens its dominance by utilizing regional countries challenging Chinese policies as bilateral partnerships. On the other hand, multilateral allies help each other. Development between border countries in various ways for defense development.
“…However, some researchers criticized BRI as being the largest and most ambitious global infrastructure project. They noted that BRI aims mainly to sustain China's domestic economic growth and increase its global influence instead of ensuring the economic development of countries along the routes (Padilla, 2017;Scobell et al, 2018). Others have argued that with the continuous implementation of BRI, the cooperative projects along the Belt and Road (BR) countries continuously yield fruits (Pan, 2017), and the integration of economy with BR countries especially in Central and West Asia, Western Europe, and Russia has reached new heights (Huang, 2016).…”
Using the data of 40 host countries during 2010 to 2017, we investigate whether the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has brought new opportunities to countries along the routes to participate in global value chains (GVCs). We employ a difference-in-differences (DID) method with propensity score matching (PSM) to solve the self-selection bias problem. The results indicate that BRI has a significant positive effect on promoting the countries along the routes to participate in GVCs, and the effect is lagging and fluctuant. Specifically, we find that the promotion effects are particularly significant in the second year of the BRI’s implementation. The heterogeneity analysis of Belt and Road (BR) countries shows that there remains a significant positive effect on developing BR countries as before, while the opposite is true for developed BR countries.
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