The new silk road and its potential for sustainable development: how open digital participation could make BRI a role model for sustainable businesses and markets

Abstract

China's New Silk Road (aka Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)) will invest a 1 trillion USD budget across Asia, Africa and Europe. As BRI wants to contribute also to sustainable development, the authors argue that only open digital participation of all citizens, corporations and governments and the collective intelligence, collaborative innovation and co-creation will make BRI a global role model for sustainability. For a highly networked, globalized, complex and digitalized world with limited resources the key ingredients for sustainable success are the following 10Cs: co-thinking, coworking, co-learning, co-creation, combinatorial innovation, co-ownership, coordination, cooperation , co-evolution, and collective intelligence. By linking BRI with digital infrastructures and corporate data management systems, a coordinated but distributed effort may be achieved with positive effects on social responsibility and sustainability for supply chains, data management, corporate reporting and regulatory issues.

Logistics and supply chain innovation in the context of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)

“…This digital connectivity in the context of the BRI is a natural extension of the evolution of digital economy (Fishwick, 2017). This digital connectivity is of vital importance to create various participaory digital platforms (Seele et al, 2019), which then can contribute to the movement of both physical goods and information. Fung et al (2018) predicted that the BRI leads to increasing the number of users or subscribers to apps, messaging services, e-payment, etc.…”

Ethics of Smart Cities: Towards Value-Sensitive Design and Co-Evolving City Life

“…It is also important to realise that equality is a principle that can promote optimality in self-organising systems [170]. In connection with the call for participatory opportunities, this brings us to the co-* principles [171]. These success principles for complex, networked societies include, for example, co-learning, co-creation, co-ordination, co-operation, and co-evolution (Figure 7).…”

Poland – A Gate to the EU or a Bottleneck in the Belt and Road Initiative

“…The BRI is a giant logistics project comprising roads, railroads, harbours, and airports. The Initiative will connect Asia with Europe and Africa through corridors, land bridges, maritime bridgeheads and a net of dedicated power plants (Seele, Jia and Helbing, 2019). The BRI acts as a great magnet attracting countries thanks to a win-win concept offering participating countries fruitful development cooperation thanks to the Chinese patient capital located in the BRI countries (Lin and Wang, 2017).…”