This is Episode 2 of our sub-series "Environmental Issues along the Belt and Road." The series considers the complexities of Chinese actors’ impacts on the environment, extractive activities, & role in driving sustainability solutions from the sands of the Mekong River to lithium mines in Argentina. 

Since 2012, China has invested roughly US$4 billion in 12 nickel projects across Southeast Asia, with a major focus on Indonesia, which supplies 16% of global nickel production. In South America, Chile, Bolivia, and Argentina— known as the Lithium Triangle—together hold over 54% of the world’s lithium reserves beneath their salt flats as of 2024, and China is the only country to have signed agreements with all three. In this episode, we explore what makes minerals “critical” to the energy transition, how China’s long-term industrial strategy and geopolitical struggles have (re)shaped global critical mineral supply chains, & how stakeholders in producer countries navigate trade-offs between economic development, sovereignty, & environmental and social impacts.

Guests: 

Dr. Jing Li is a professor at Simon Fraser University’s Beedie School of Business and holds the Canada Research Chair in Global Investment Strategy. She also serves as the Co-Director of the Jack Austin Center for Asia Pacific Business Studies. Related reading here, here & here.

Dr. Anastasia Ufimtseva is the Senior Program Manager for International Trade and Investment at the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada. Her research explores global energy governance, trade & investment, the political economy of natural resources, & international development, with a focus on Asia. Related reading here & here. 

Muhammad Habib Abiyan Dzakwan (Zahwan) is a researcher at the Department of International Relations, CSIS Indonesia. His research areas cover sustainable development, critical minerals, & emerging technologies. Related reading here, here & here.

Dr. Stella Juste is a researcher at CONICET (Argentina’s National Scientific and Technical Research Council). In a recent study, she applies dependency theory to identify a “double periphery” pattern in Argentina–China relations, particularly through lithium extraction & renewable energy projects. Related reading here.

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Keren speaks with Tayyab Safdar and Hasan H. Karrar about the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a 3,000 km Chinese infrastructure network project currently under construction in Pakistan and a flagship project of the Belt and Road Initiative. CPEC spans energy, highways, railways, and ports, aiming to connect China's western regions to the Arabian Sea through Pakistan. For China, CPEC offers shorter routes for energy imports and trade; for Pakistan, it offers economic growth, industrialization, and greater regional connectivity. 

Tayyab Safdar is the Global Security & Justice Track Director; Assistant Professor of Global Studies & Engagements, A&S at the University of Virginia. His research explores the evolving dynamics of South-South Development Cooperation, with the rise of emerging powers in the developing world like China and India. His research also looks at the implications of increasing Chinese investment in developing countries that are a part of the Belt & Road Initiative (BRI), like Pakistan.

Hasan H. Karrar is Associate Professor in the Mushtaq Ahmad Gurmani School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Lahore University of. Management Sciences. He researches transnational connections and geopolitical alignments between China, Central Asia and north Pakistan, as well as development, governance and securitization on state peripheries, and in the deployment and representation of Chinese economic and strategic power.

Recommendations:

Hasan:

• Study, think about, and pay attention to what is happening in Pakistan
• Visit Pakistan!

Tayyab:

• Pay attention to the local context (beyond nation-state-oriented views to more community-oriented views) when thinking about big projects like CPEC
• Also recommends visiting Pakistan 

Keren:

• Seeing China's Belt and Road, eds. Edward Schatz, Rachel Silvey (Oxford University Press, 2024)

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Leland Lazarus joins Juliet to talk about Chinese and Taiwanese engagement in Latin America and the Caribbean, from official diplomatic activities to BRI projects to transnational organized crime. 

Leland Lazarus is the Associate Director of National Security at Florida International University’s Jack D. Gordon Institute of Public Policy. He is an expert on China’s relations with Latin America and the Caribbean, and manages a team of researchers and interns that collect data and analysis on U.S. national security and governance in the region. Fluent in both Mandarin and Spanish, he holds an M.A. in U.S.-China Foreign Policy at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and a B.A. in International Relations at Brown University. His past experience includes work in the U.S. Embassy for Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean, the U.S. Consulate General in Shenyang, China, and former work as an Associate Producer at China Central Television and as a Fulbright Scholar in Panama. 

Recommendations:

Leland:

• Earth League International's work, particularly that of Andrea Crosta, founder, executive director, and board member
• Chinese Activities in LAC Dashboard (soon to release 2.0)
• FIU flagship conference: Hemispheric Security Conference on May 9 and 10

Juliet:

• China in Global Capitalism: Building International Solidarity Against Imperial Rivalry by Eli Friedman, Kevin Lin, Rosa Liu, Ashley Smith (coming June 2024)

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Bowen Gu joins Juliet and Erik on the podcast to talk about environmental justice and China's coal investments in Indonesia, with a focus on Gu's recent paper: Black gold and green BRI: A grounded analysis of Chinese investment in coal-fired power plants in Indonesia (2024).

Bowen Gu is a PhD student at the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology, Autonomous University of Barcelona (ICTA-UAB). Her research looks into coal-related environmental justice movements in China and broader regions under the Belt and Road Initiative. 

Recommendations:
 
Erik:

• Terror Capitalism: Uyghur Dispossession and Masculinity in a Chinese City by Darren Byler (2022)
• The symphonies of Glenn Branca (especially no.10)

Bowen:

• Land, Water, Air, and Freedom: The Making of World Movements for Environmental Justice by Joan Martínez-Alier (2023)
• Album of Indonesian music (name tk)

Juliet:

• The Railpolitik: Leadership and Agency in Sino-African Infrastructure Development by Yuan Wang (2023)

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Professor Omolade Adunbi joins Juliet and Erik on the podcast to talk about China's free trade zones in Nigeria. Adunbi is the Director of the African Studies Center, Professor of Anthropology and Afroamerican and African Studies, Professor of Law, and Faculty Associate in the Program in the Environment at the University of Michigan. His research explores issues related to governance, infrastructures of extraction, environmental politics and rights, power, violence, culture, transnational institutions, multinational corporations, and the postcolonial state.


Recommendations:

Omolade:

• Music of Fela Kuti
• Power, Knowledge, Land: Contested Ontologies of Land and its Governance in Africa by Laura German (2022)

Erik:

• Episode of the Sinica Podcast: Robert Daly of the Kissinger Institute on the morality of U.S. China policy
• Laufey's music, specifically her new album Bewitched

Juliet:

• Cooperating for the Climate: Learning from International Partnerships in China's Clean Energy Sector by Joanna Lewis (2023)

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Juliet, Erik, and guest Tim Ruhlig discuss technical standards, China’s growth in technical industries and its increasing influence in leading and setting standards, and the new geopolitics of technical standardization and interdependence.

Tim Ruhlig is a senior fellow at the German Council on Foreign Relations, where he researches Europe-China relations, German-China relations, Hong Kong politics, and Chinese foreign industrial policy, He is the founder of the Digital Power China (DPC) Research Consortium, which brings together European engineers and Chinese scholars to carry out policy-relevant research on the PRC’s growing digital technology footprint and its implications for Europe.

Recommendations:

Tim:

•  The Emperor’s New Road: China and the Project of the Century, Jonathan Hillman (2020)
• U.S.-Taiwan Relations: Will China's Challenge Lead to a Crisis? Bonnie Glaser, Ryan Hass, Richard Bush (2023)
• Film: “To Life” Zhang Yi Mou (1994)
• Wildland: The Making of America's Fury, Evan Osnos (2021)

Erik: 

• "Barbie Heimer"—Barbie (2023) and Oppenheimer (2023) movies on the same day (recommendation is Barbie is the better movie)

Juliet:

• “Even China Isn’t Convinced It Can Replace the U.S.” Jessia Chen Weiss (2023)

Thanks for listening!

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Before the shovels hit the dirt, before a developer gets construction permits, before an MOU is signed, there exists a huge process of project feasibility, planning, and pre-approval. That process is incredibly complex and costly, but a new Multilateral Cooperation Center for Development Finance (MCDF) has been established to help. Shuang Liu joins Juliet and Erik on this episode to discuss how this might help kick start and expand the pipeline of more sustainable projects, and her broader goals in working at the World Resources Institute.

Shuang Liu is the China Finance Director and Acting Director at the Sustainable Finance Center at the World Resources Institute. She leads the Center's work on China finance and the Belt and Road Initiative, and works with governments, private financial institutions, NGOs, and other partners to enhance the regulatory framework and provide enabling conditions to shift China's investment to sustainable finance. She holds a master's degree in environmental and resource economics from University College London and a bachelor's in economics from Peking University.

Her article on the Panda Paw Dragon Claw blog is entitled, "Can a Chinese-led multilateral initiative help unlock more sustainable infrastructure in the Global South?"

Recommendations:

Shuang:

• An Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic by Daniel Mendelsohn (2018)

Juliet:

• Try to bike more in the summer, or pick up any activity that is good for both yourself and the planet!

Erik:

• Outsourcing Repression episode of the Pekingology podcast with Lynette H. Ong and host Jude Blanchette 
• Outsourcing Repression: Everyday State Power in Contemporary China by Lynette H. Ong (2022)

Thanks for listening!

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Juliet chats with Laetitia Tran Ngoc about the state of China-Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) relations, the way people in the DRC view China and the U.S., outside interest in critical minerals mining in the DRC, and the domestic situation of the DRC that acts as a destabilizing factor to it all. 

Her article in South China Morning Post is here: "Mineral-rich central Africa become focal point in US-China tug of war"

Laetitia Tran Ngoc is a freelance journalist and consultant specializing in government communications, with extensive experience in advising diplomatic institutions in their strategic relationship with the European Union.  Her writing focuses on central and east Africa and China-Africa relations. She previously worked as a research officer at the Embassy of Ethiopia in Brussels and at the Taipei Representative Office to the EU and Belgium. She has master’s degrees in International Relations and Chinese Language and Culture from the Free University of Brussels. 

Recommendations:

Laetitia:

• Sur les ailes du dragon: Voyages entre l'Afrique et la Chine (On the Wings of the Dragon) by Lieve Joris (2014)

Juliet:

• The Conservation Revolution: Radical Ideas for Saving Nature Beyond the Anthropocene by Bram Büscher and Robert Fletcher (2020)
• Fighting Fire and Fascism in the American West in Dissent Magazine, by Patrick Bigger and Sara Nelson (2023)

Thanks as always for excellent editing by Taili Ni!

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Alessandro (Ale) Rippa joins Juliet and Erik on the podcast to talk about how he uses China's borderlands as a starting point to understand the Chinese state, global engagements like the Belt and Road Initiative, and Chinese development. They discuss Ale's experiences working in China's border regions in Xinjiang and Yunnan, how borders are zones of connection and disconnection, China's historical support for the Communist Party of Burma, and much more.

Alessandro Rippa is associate professor at the University of Oslo's Department of Social Anthropology. His research centers on China's borderlands as lenses for studying infrastructure, global circulations, and the environment. He is PI of a new ERC Starting Grant project entitled, "Amber Worlds: A Geological Anthropology for the Anthropocene". 

Featured work: 

• "Imagined borderlands: Terrain, technology and trade in the making and managing of the China-Myanmar border." 2022. Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography .
• "Borderland Infrastructures: Trade, Development, and Control in Western China." 

Recommendations:

Ale:

• Infrastructure and the Remaking of Asia edited by Max Hirsh and Till Mostowlansky (2023)
• Keep an eye out for the upcoming special issue of The China Quarterly on Chinese infrastructure

Erik:

• Scribd.com for eBooks and audiobooks
• Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language by Amanda Montell (2020)
• Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism by Amanda Montell (2021)

Juliet:

• Fractured China: How State Transformation is Shaping China's Rise by Lee Jones and Shahar Hameiri (2021)
• Sinica Podcast: Sinica at the Association for Asian Studies Conference, Boston 2023: Capsule interviews

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May Farid and Hui Li drop by the podcast to talk about INGOs, or international non-governmental organizations, and specifically how their relationship with China is shifting as China goes global.  The conversation focuses on their article "International NGOs as intermediaries in China's 'going out' strategy."  

May Farid is a political scientist studying civil society, policy and development in contemporary China and beyond. She is a visiting scholar at Stanford University's Center on China's Economy and Institutions and a Lecturer at the University of Hong Kong. She holds a doctorate from the University of Oxford and has worked extensively in the NGO sector in China, as well as a researcher with China's leading policy think tank.

Hui Li is an Assistant Professor at the University of Hong Kong. Her research focuses on public and nonprofit management, organization theory, and civic engagement. In collaboration with a team of researchers, she studies NGOs and environmental governance in authoritarian China. In addition, she works closely with colleagues from the Civic Engagement Initiative at USC and studies neighborhood councils and civic engagement in Los Angeles.

Recommendations:

Hui: 

• Activists beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics by Margaret E. Keck and Kathryn Sikkink 

May:

• Principled instrumentalism: a theory of transnational NGO behaviour by George E. Mitchell and Hans Peter Schmitz
• Beyond the Boomerang: From Transnational Advocacy Networks to Transcalar Advocacy in International Politics edited by Christopher L. Pallas and Elizabeth A. Bloodgood 
• Leutert, Wendy, Elizabeth Plantan and Austin Strange. "Puzzling Partnerships: Overseas Infrastructure Development by Chinese State-Owned Enterprises and Humanitarian Organizations". 2022.

Erik:

• Two albums by Lingua Ignota
  • Sinner Get Ready 
  • Caligula
• RRR film 

Juliet:

• Follow Yige Dong, assistant professor of global gender and sexuality studies at the University at Buffalo
• Dong, Yige. The Dilemma of Foxconn Moms: Social Reproduction and the Rise of 'Gig Manufacturing' in China. 2022.

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Juliet is joined by friends and fellow researchers Jesse Rodenbiker and Tyler Harlan to discuss their recent experiences at the COP15 of the Conference on Biological Diversity, China's growing environmental leadership, and China's domestic environmental policies and their impact on BRI initiatives and overseas engagements. Jesse starts off the conversation with some background on China's approach to environmental governance - based on his articles "Making Ecology Developmental: China's Environmental Sciences and Green Modernization in Global Context,"  "Green silk roads, partner state development, and environmental governance," and his upcoming book "Ecological States: Politics of Science and Nature in Urbanizing China."

Jesse Rodenbiker is an Associate Research Scholar at Princeton University with the Center on Contemporary China and an Assistant Teaching Professor of Geography at Rutgers University. He is also currently a fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies, and a China Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. He is a human-environment geographer and interdisciplinary social scientist focusing on environmental governance, urbanization, and social inequality in China and globally.

Tyler Harlan is an Assistant Professor of Urban and Environmental Studies at Loyola Marymount University. His research focuses on the political economy and uneven socio-environmental impacts of China's green development transformation and the implications of this transformation for other industrializing countries.

Juliet Lu is an Assistant Professor at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver in the Department of Forest Resources Management and the School of Public Policy & Global Affairs. 
 
Recommendations:

Jesse:

• Maoism: A Global History by Julia Lovell
• Rosewood by Annah Lake Zhu 

Tyler:

• Certifying China by Yixian Sun
• China and the global politics of nature-based solutions in Environmental Science & Policy  (2022) by Jeffrey Qi (former BRI Pod episode!) and Peter Dauvergne
• China's rising influence on climate governance: Forging a path for the global South in Global Environmental Change (2022) by Jeffrey Qi and Peter Dauvergne

Juliet:

• Check out the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) (where Jeffrey Qi incidentally works ;) for interesting analysis on the Convention on Biological Diversity and China. 

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Kyle Chan visits the Belt and Road Podcast to talk about state capacity in railway bureaucracies in China and India, his research collected while riding trains through the two countries, the incredibly mundane naming of Chinese companies, and much more. This episode discusses Kyle's research published in two articles:  Inside China's state-owned enterprises: Managed competition through a multi-level structure (2022) and The organizational roots of state capacity: Comparing railway bureaucracies in China and India (2022).

Kyle Chan is a PhD student in sociology at Princeton University, where his research focuses on bureaucracy and infrastructure development in China and India. He spent two years doing fieldwork in both countries looking at railway development, including that of China's high-speed rail system.

Recommendations:

Kyle:

• The Chinese Mayor (2015 documentary)
• Powerless (2014 documentary)

Erik:

• Rühlig, Tim. Chinese Influence through technical standardization power (2022).
• Tár (2022 film)

Juliet:

• High Stakes: China's Leadership in Global Biodiversity Governance by Jesse Rodenbiker in the New Security Beat.
• Coverage of the Convention on Biological Diversity in China Dialogue

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Beimeng Fu and Zhaoyin Feng join the Belt and Road Podcast to talk about durian, a tropical fruit most widely known for its strong and divisive odor. It's also a fruit in very high demand in China; the country consumes 1.5 million tons of durian per year. Beimeng and Zhaoyin talk about how Chinese consumption of the fruit is driving durian plantation expansion across Southeast Asia and what that means for the region.

Beimeng Fu is an independent multimedia journalist and filmmaker based in Mexico. She previously worked as senior producer of original video and documentary production at Sixth Tone. Her work has been published by The Washington Post, BuzzFeed News, ABC News, South China Morning Post, among others. She co-publishes Far & Near, a visual newsletter about China from local perspectives.

Zhaoyin Feng is an independent journalist and documentary producer, specializing in covering China and its place in the world. She has reported from the U.S., Europe, and Asia for a wide range of international media outlets. She previously worked as a North America correspondent and investigative documentary producer at the BBC World Service, reporting in both English and Chinese in digital, television, and audio formats.

Recommendations:

Beimeng:

• Welcome Me to the Kingdom by Mai Nardone (2023)

Zhaoyin:

• Howtown show on Youtube from Adam Cole and Joss Fong
• The Present Past show on Youtube from Jochem

Erik:

• Kendrick Lamar & SZA concert
• Minneapolis 

Juliet:

• Podcast episode on Initium where Beimeng and Zhaoyin discuss their research in Chinese (and try listening at 0.75 speed if you need to practice your Mandarin!) 

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Thanks for listening!

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Juliet and Erik are joined by Maria Repnikova to talk about her book, "Chinese soft power," Confucius Institutes, China's love for spectacle, and of course, how all this and more applies to the Belt and Road. What is soft power? How is China doing when it comes to soft power projection around the world? Listen to find out!

Maria Repnikova is the Director of the Center for Global Information Studies and an Assistant Professor in Global Communication at Georgia State University. She is a scholar of global communication, with a comparative focus on China and Russia. Her research examines the processes of political resistance and persuasion in illiberal political contexts, drawing on ethnographic research in the field. Dr. Repnikova holds a doctorate from the University of Oxford, where she was a Rhodes Scholar. She speaks fluent Mandarin, Russian and Spanish. Her book, Media Politics in China: Improvising Power under Authoritarianism examines participatory communications channels under an authoritarian regime through the relationship between China's critical journalists and the one-party state in the past decade. 

Recommendations:
Maria:

• Baykurt, Burcu and Victoria de Grazia (ed.) Soft-Power Internationalism: Competing for Cultural Influence in the 21st-Century Global Order (2021).

Erik:

• Pekingology Podcast from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) with Jude Blanchette, specifically these two episodes:
  • Terror Capitalism with Darren Byler 
  • Localized Bargaining with Xiao Ma
• The Rehearsal, Nathan Fielder's new docu-comedy series on HBO

Juliet:

• Qi, Jeffrey and Peter Dauvergne. China and the global politics of nature-based solutions. Environmental Science and Policy (2022).

*Bonus: The Belt and Road Sing Along Music Video*

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Keren Zhu talked with us about her research on the socioeconomic impacts of the Belt and Road, specifically with regard to Kenya's Standard Gauge Railway (SGR). She provides background and analysis on the SGR,  she and Eric discuss their personal experiences riding the railway, and more! Much of the conversation centers around Keren's recent work with co-authors Ben Mwangi and Lynn Hu, published in the article Socioeconomic impact of China's infrastructure-led growth model in Africa: A case study of the Kenyan Standard Gauge Railway (2022). We also draw on her piece, "Addressing the Impact Evaluation Gaps in Belt and Road Initiative Projects in Africa."

Keren Zhu is a Global China Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Boston University Global Development Policy Center. She holds a Ph.D. in Policy Analysis from the Pardee RAND Graduate School, and an M.Sc. in Social Anthropology from the University of Oxford. Her research focuses on the BRI, global infrastructure, international development, and program evaluation. 

Recommendations:

Erik:

• Chess.com
• Heathcliff comics by George Gately

Keren:

• Modernizing America's Electricity Infrastructure by Mason Willrich (2017)
• Pairing Shakespeare with contemporary issues and authors (Keren's current pairing: Shakespeare's Othello with Born in Blackness by Howard French)

Juliet:

• Try to drive your car less and learn to embrace the pace change that brings you!

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Jeffrey Qi discusses China's growing role in high-level, high-stakes global climate governance. We discuss research Jeffrey conducted as a master's student in political science at the University of British Columbia and the resulting article he wrote with his advisor Peter Dauvergne, China's rising influence on climate governance: Forging a path for the global South (2021), which can be found here.

Jeffrey Qi is a policy analyst at the International Institute for Sustainable Development's Resilience Program (IISD). Based in Vancouver, he provides research, project management, and communication support with a focus on national adaptation planning (NAP) processes, ecosystem-based adaptation, and multilateral agreements. He works on supporting developing countries’ national adaptation planning processes and the implementation of the Paris Agreement and the UN Convention on Biological Diversity. 

Recommendations:

Jeffrey:

• China's Environmental Foreign Relations by Heidi Wang-Kaeding (2021)
• Analysis: Nine key moments that changed China's mind about climate change by Jianqiang Liu from Carbon Brief (2021)
• Competing narratives of nature-based solutions: Leveraging the power of nature or dangerous distraction? by Marina Stavroula Melanidis and Shannon Hagerman (2022)

Erik:

• If you get the chance to go on a safari, take it!
• Same goes for the Chinese-built SGR railway in Kenya

Juliet:

• Travelling with Big Brother: A Reporter's Junket in China by Solomon Elusoji (2019)

Thanks for listening!

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Erik is joined by Winslow Robertson and Owakhela Kankhwende to discuss their chapter of the book From Trump to Biden and Beyond: Reimagining U.S.-China Relations, entitled "U.S. Strategy Vis-À-Vis China's Presence in the African Continent: Description and Prescription".

Winslow Robertson is a PhD student at IESE Business School at the University of Navarra, where he focuses on Chinese provincial SOEs and the Belt and Road. He is also the founder of Cowries and Rice, a Sino-Africa management consultancy.

Owakhela Kankhwende is a recent graduate with a MAS in business analytics from Fordham University's Gabelli School of Business. He has been a research analyst at Pivotal Advisors, and is currently a data analyst at Insider.

Recommendations:

Owakhela:

• The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon (1961)
• UnLearn: 101 Simple Truths for a Better Life by Humble the Poet (2019)

Winslow:

• From Politics to Business: How a state-led fund is investing in Africa? The case of the China-Africa Development Fund by Hangwei Li (2020)
• The Long Game: China's Grand Strategy to Displace American Order by Rush Doshi (2021)
• The Dragon Prince series on Netflix (2018-19)

Erik:

• I Want You Back film (2022)
• Promises album by Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders, and the London Symphony Orchestra (2021)

Thanks for listening!

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Juliet and Erik are joined by Agnieszka Joniak-Lüthi and Zarina Urmanbetova of Roadwork Asia to discuss China's road infrastructure projects in Central Asia and their research at Roadwork Asia, including their article on infrastructural connections across the Toghuz-Toro district of central Kyrgystan Welcome and Unwelcome Connections: Travelling Post-Soviet Roads in Kyrgyzstan.

Agnieszka Joniak-Lüthi is a professor of social anthropology at the University of Fribourg and head of the ROADWORK project. She focuses on China and the Sino-Central Asian borderlands. Her recent research explores the nexus of transport infrastructure, settler colonialism, and processes of state territorialization in northwest China. She has also expanded her research into infrastructure maintenance and how temporalities of materials, investment, discourses, government agendas, ecosystems, and humans affect the social life of infrastructure in the Sino-Central Asian borderlands.

Zarina Urmanbetova is a social anthropologist from Kyrgyzstan. She has worked on projects for UN Women Kyrgyzstan, Urban Initiatives, the Research Institute of Islamic Studies in Bishkek, and the Analytical Center Polis Asia. She holds a BA from the Kyrgyz-Turkish Manas University and a MA in social anthropology from Hacettepe University in Turkey. At ROADWORK, she focuses on the social and cultural life of roads in central Kyrgyzstan. 

Recommendations:

Agnieszka 

• Roadsides,  an open-access journal designated to be a forum devoted to exploring the social, cultural, and political life of infrastructure
• Belt & Road in Global Perspective, a project of the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy at the University of Toronto

Zarina

• 14 Peaks: Nothing is Impossible documentary on Netflix

Erik

• Bish Bosch album by Scott Walker

Juliet

• How Sand Mining Threatens a Way of Life in Southeast Asia. National Geographic. Photos & reporting by Sim Chi Yin, writing by Vince Beiser. March 2018.
• Satellites Spy on Sand Mining in the Mekong by Alka Tripathy-Lang, Dec 2021. 
• The Messy Business of Sand Mining Explained. Marco Hernandez, Simon Scarr, Katie Daigle. Feb 2021. 

Thanks for listening!

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Margaret Myers returns to The Belt and Road Podcast to speak with Erik about the role and development of China's international insurance sector in Latin America and the Caribbean.  The conversation is based on her January 2022 report from The Dialogue entitled Going Out, Guaranteed: Chinese Insurers in Latin America. 

Margaret Myers is the director of the Asia & Latin America Program at the Inter-American Dialogue. She created the Dialogue's China and Latin America Working Group in 2011, as well as the China-Latin America Finance Database in cooperation with the Global China Initiative at Boston University's Global Development Policy Center. She has previously worked as a Latin America analyst and China analyst for the U.S. Department of Defense.

Recommendations:

Margaret

• Albright, Zara C., Rebecca Ray, Yudong (Nathan) Liu (2022), China-Latin America and the Caribbean Economic Bulletin, 2022 Edition 

Erik

• Richard Simmons  'Sweatin' to the Oldies' Workout Video

A special thanks to Taili Ni for editing this episode! 

Thanks for listening!

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On this episode, Juliet and Erik speak to Dr. Ammar Malik about AidData’s Global Chinese Development Finance Dataset, Version 2.0.  This dataset provides the most comprehensive data on China’s overseas development finance activities, covering projects over 18 commitment years (2000-2017). They discuss the trends and findings from the dataset, break down China’s overseas loans and the concept of ‘hidden debt’, explore potential future applications of the data, and more.
 
Dr. Ammar Malik is a senior research scientist at AidData, a research lab at William & Mary where he leads the Chinese Development Finance Program. He holds a Ph.D. in Public Policy from George Mason University, an M.A. in Public Affairs from Sciences Po Paris, an M.A. in Public Policy from the National University of Singapore, and a B.Sc. in Economics and Mathematics from the Lahore University of Management Sciences. 
 
Read more of Dr. Malik’s work:

• Malik, et al. (2021), Banking on the Belt and Road: Insights from a new global dataset of 13,427 Chinese development projects 
  • Find Mandarin Chinese versions of the report’s executive summary here and the main report here
• Malik, Ammar and Bradley Parks (2021), Hidden debt exposure to China: What is it, where is it, and should we be concerned? 

Recommendations

Ammar

• Bluhm, et al (2020), Connective Financing: Chinese Infrastructure Projects and the Diffusion of Economic Activity in Developing Countries 

 Erik

• Margaret Myers, Going Out Guaranteed: Chinese Insurers and Latin America
• How To with John Wilson on HBO

Juliet (via Jack Zinda’s recommendation)

• R, Gabriel and Jeremy Wallace (2022). Political Science, Authoritarianism, and Climate Change: Can the Climate Crisis Undermine Democratic Legitimacy? 
  • In response to: Mittiga, Ross (2021). Political Legitimacy, Authoritarianism, and Climate Change. Cambridge University Press.

~Thanks to Taili Ni, the newest member of the Belt and Road Podcast team as of March 2022, who edited this episode and wrote the show notes!~

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Just across the Xinjiang border, China is investing in a range of sectors. Infrastructure and road construction are booming as in many other places, but cotton investments dominate and are seen as a distinct type. Cotton is considered a strategic crop both to China and Tajikistan and is embedded in a range of elite networks and state power. Cotton Diplomacy is one of many things we cover in this episode, listen in!

Read more of Dr. Hofman's work: 

1. Chinese Cotton Diplomacy in Tajikistan: Greasing the Ties by Reviving the Cotton Economy
2. In the Interstices of Patriarchal Order: Spaces of Female Agency in Chinese-Tajik Labour Encounters
3. Towards a geography of window dressing and benign neglect: The state, donors and elites in Tajikistan's trajectories of post-Soviet agrarian change

Recommendations
Irna

• The People's Map
• Host an event bringing together all the podcast interviewees!

Erik

• Embrace home design DIY!
• Listen to MeatLoaf Bat Outta Hell 2 album especially

Juliet

• The Big Payback: The History of the Business of Hip-Hop (2010) 
• The Power and Business of Hip-Hop: A Reading List on an American Art Form. Stories of hi-hop’s genius, influence, struggle, and endurance
• Overcoming Challenges to the Research Environment in China, Harvard Fairbank Center with YuenYuen Ang, Liz Perry, Denise Ho and Rob Weller (Summary)
• This Tik Tok that Erik sent me making fun of podcast hosts that do recommendations at the end lol

Thanks for listening!

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On episode 51, Juliet and Erik welcome back Dr. Hong Zhang to discuss the history, interests, corporate structures and agency of International Chinese infrastructure contractors.

Discussion is based on Hong Zhang's May 2021 working paper for SAIS-China Africa Research Initiative entitled: Chinese International Contractors in Africa: Structure and Agency.   

Hong Zhang is a Postdoctoral Fellow at Johns Hopkins University's SIAS-CARI and a 2021-22 China and the World Program Fellow at Columbia University. She received her PhD in Public Policy from the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University in 2021.

She is one of the best thinkers and writers on all things Belt and Road and we were lucky to have her back on the show!

Here are this episode's recommendations!

Erik:
1. Benedetta, dir. Paul Verhoeven
2. Encanto, dir. Jared Bush, Byron Howard, and Charise Castro Smith (+ the Pixar short that plays at the beginning!)

Hong Zhang:
1. "Archaeologies of the Belt and Road Initiative," Made in China Journal
2. James Reilly, Orchestration: China's Economic Statecraft Across Asia and Europe, Oxford University Press
3. Lina Benabdallah, Shaping the Future of Power: Knowledge Production and Network-Building in China-Africa  Relations, University of Michigan Press

Juliet:
1. 狗熊有话说 Bear Talk podcast
2. Sustainable Asia  podcast

Thanks for listening!

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Juliet and Erik celebrate their 50th episode by discussing their first co-authored article "Beyond Competition: Why the BRI and the B3W Can’t and Shouldn’t Be Considered Rivals" (Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung)

On June 12, 2021, US President Biden along with the leaders of the Group of Seven (G7) launched their own “positive alternative” to the BRI - the Build Back Better for the World (B3W) multilateral infrastructure investment initiative.  Juliet and Erik make the case that framing the two initiatives as competing alternatives is deceptive as on one hand, they are not comparable in many important ways, and that they each face the same challenges that all infrastructure initiatives face, regardless of the implementing country(ies). 

Importantly, they also see that the focus on US-China competition distracts from the important role of host countries in directing how infrastructure investments unfold on the ground and that the focus on the geopolitics surrounding the two initiatives misrepresents their stakes for local communities and environments that are to be affected by these projects, the workers that will build them, and the people they will connect.

Recommendations:

Erik
1. I think you should leave with Tim Robinson
2. Party like it's 2003! Put away any screen that is connected to the internet and enjoy your evenings with friends in family in an analog world

Juliet
1.  Last week tonight with John Oliver's analysis of the current state of Taiwan 

Thanks for listening!

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Mingwei Huang joins Juliet, Keren, and Sisi to talk about the social and racial dimensions of China's increasing engagement with Africa, with a focus on Huang's research in Johannesburg, South Africa. The discussion is inspired by Mingwei's recent book, Reconfiguring Racial Capitalism: South Africa in the Chinese Century (Duke University Press, 2024).

Mingwei Huang is assistant professor of Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Dartmouth University. She is an interdisciplinary scholar of race and migration trained in American studies and gender & sexuality studies. 

Recommendations:

Mingwei:

• Made in Ethiopia film (2024)

Keren:

• When Life Gives You Tangerines series on Netflix

Juliet:

• Elizabeth Plantan, Wendy Leutert, Austin Strange, Pivoting to Overseas Development: International NGOs' Changing Engagement with China (2025)

Thanks for listening!

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On this episode Erik speaks with returning guest Dr. Alvin Camba about his latest research paper "How Chinese firms approach investment risk: strong leaders, cancellation, and pushback" (link to paper)

This groundbreaking research uses hundreds of in-depth interviews with top officials from China, Chinese SOEs, state-owned banks as well as Philippine and Indonesian political and economic elite to get a glimpse at how Chinese firms view the strength of a foreign leader, how that affects their investment decisions and how miscalculating strength can lead to undesirable outcomes for Chinese investors and/or State.

Alvin Camba is an assistant professor at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver. He received his PhD in Sociology from Johns Hopkins University and is also a non-resident fellow at the Climate Policy Lab at the Fletcher School at Tufts University.

Recommendations
Alvin:
1. How Duterte Strong-Armed Chinese Dam-builders but weakened Philippine Institutions
2. How China Lends: A Rare look into 100 debt contracts with foreign governments.  Anna Gelpern, Sebastian Horn, Scott Morris, Brad Parks, Christopher Trebesch at AIDDATA

Erik:
1. Get a treadmill desk!
2. The nihilistic electronic noise music of Pharmakon - specifically recommending the song No Natural Order  

Thanks for listening!

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On the episode, Juliet and Erik speak with Senior Fellow and Director of the   Reconnecting Asia Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Jonathan E. Hillman. Jon discusses the BRI in a historical context and talks about the way he's seen the BRI shift since its inception in 2013. The interview is based on Jon's 2020 book The Emperor's New Road: China and the Project of the Century (Yale University Press -- Juliet's review of the book)

Recommendations:

Juliet:
1) Feature on the main takeaways of the 2020 China census, South China Morning Post
2) Sophia Yan at the Telegraph: Xinjiang reporting, Hong Kong Silenced

Erik:
1) China's Population Conundrum, Sinica podcast
2) an enthusiastic plea to come to North Dakota

Jon:
1) Reconnecting Asia, CSIS
2) A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, George Saunders, 2021

Thanks for listening!

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On this episode, Juliet talks with Dr. Kristen Hopewell, the Canada Research Chair in Global Policy in the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at the University of British Columbia. Also a Wilson China Fellow, Kristen's work sheds light on how international governing bodies like the WTO and OECD can influence and be influenced by growing Chinese agricultural trade, subsidies, and export credit, combined with the increasing exercise of power by emerging powers coming to the international forefront. Who wins and who loses?

Today's interview is based on:
1) Clash of Powers: US-China Rivalry in Global Trade Governance, Cambridge University Press, 2020
2) Breaking the WTO: How Emerging Powers Disrupted the Neoliberal Project, Stanford University Press, 2016
3) What is 'Made in China 2025' – and why is it a threat to Trump's trade goals?, Washington Post, 2018

Check out our recommendations!
Kristen: Essays of the Rise of China and its Implications, Wilson Center
Juliet: Food in China's international relations, D. Zha and H. Zhang, 2013

~Special thanks to Maggie Gaus, who joined the Belt and Road Pod team in Dec 2020 and edited this episode~

Thanks for listening!

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On this episode Juliet and Erik speak with Dr. Julie Klinger about her research that smartly connects the seemingly disparate topics of geological surveying, Chinese domestic environmental and social movements, international infrastructure investments and China-Africa space cooperation. It's a fascinating discussion that you certainly don't want to miss!
 
Our interview is based on:
1) Julie's amazing book, Rare Earth Frontiers
2) "Environment, development, and security politics in the production of Belt and Road spaces" and
3) "China, Africa, and the Rest: recent trends in space science, technology, and satellite development."

Julie Klinger is an Assistant Professor in the University of Delaware’s Department of Geography & Spatial Sciences. She is associate director of the Minerals, Materials, and Society Program at U Delaware and co-facilitates the Embodiment Lab.

Here are this week's recommendations!

Juliet:
1) Hunger Games film, 2012 (significance of the three-finger salute)
2) Timothy McLaughlin's Atlantic articles discussing Myanmar

Erik:
1) Pekingology podcast, CSIS
2) Punisher, Phoebe Bridgers (especially the song aptly named Chinese Satellite), 2020

Julie:
1) Alie Ward's Ologies Podcast
2) The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey Into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred, Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, 2021
3) Intimate Geopolitics: Love, Territory, and the Future on India's Northern Threshold, Sara Smith, 2020

~Special thanks to Maggie Gaus, who joined the Belt and Road Pod team in Dec 2020 and edited this episode~

Thanks for listening!

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In this episode, Erik is joined by Terrence Neal and Dr. Elizabeth Losos to discuss their recent report that uses Ghana's $2bn bauxite-for-infrastructure deal with Sinohydro as a case study to look into the environmental implications of BRI resource-financed infrastructure agreements.

Read the full report here: "The Environmental Implications of China-Africa Resource-Finance Infrastructure Agreements: Lessons Learned from Ghana's Sinohydro Agreement"

About the authors:
Terrence Neal is a natural resource governance researcher and current U.S. District court judicial law clerk. Terrence received his J.D. from Harvard Law School in 2019, and his Bachelor’s Degree in Public Policy from Duke University in 2015. His research focuses on international human rights law, international economic law, and natural resources governance.

Dr. Elizabeth Losos is a Senior Fellow at Duke University's Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions. 

Guest recommendations:

Elizabeth:
1) China’s Belt and Road: Implications for the United States, Council on Foreign Relations, March 2021.

Terrence:
1) Go outside and ride a bike!

Erik:
1) Twenty Years of Data on China’s Africa Lending, Kevin Acker and Deborah Brautigam, March 2021.
2) How China Lends: A Rare Look into 100 Debt Contracts with Foreign Governments, Anna Gelpern et al., March 2021.

~Special thanks to Maggie Gaus, who joined the Belt and Road Pod team in Dec 2020 and edited this episode~

Thanks for listening!

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 Juliet and Erik talk with research assistant professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology - Kelly Chen about her latest publication on the effects of Chinese infrastructure aid in Laos: hidden labor struggles, subcontracting, equity, and how it all came to a head with the Trans-Laos Railway project. Kelly dives into Chinese international lending, economic geographies, and narratives about creditworthiness and power through this case study.

Read Kelly's work here:
Sovereign Debt in the Making: Financial Entanglements and Labor Politics along the Belt and Road in Laos

And here's an article by Kelly and Juliet for Panda Paw Dragon Claw:
From Pioneers to Brokers: How a diverse Chinese diaspora facilitates the Belt and Road in Laos

And check out our recommendations!

Erik:
1) Double recommendation for Sovereign Debt in the Making: Financial Entanglements and Labor Politics along the Belt and Road in Laos
2) Zojirushi rice cookers!

Kelly:
1) Biao Xiang: China's Global Migration in the New Millenium
2) Virtual Engagements on Global China Speaker Series

Juliet:
1) Maria Repnikova: No, The Chaos in America is Not a Gift to China and Russia

~Special thanks to Maggie Gaus, who joined the Belt and Road Pod team in Dec 2020 and edited this episode~

Thanks for listening!

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On this episode, Juliet and Erik talk with Margaret Myers about the growing importance of Sub-national actors in China's geo-economic engagement in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Read the entire report "Going Local: An Assessment of China's Administrative-Level Activity in Latin America and the Caribbean" here

Margaret Myers is the director of the Asia & Latin America Program at the Inter-American Dialogue.

Recommendations:
Margaret: 
- Yellowstone, Infrastructure Finance: The Business of Infrastructure for a Sustainable Future by Neil Grigg

Juliet:
- The Yongle Emperor @Imperial_Yongle and similarly the Chongzhen Emperor
@ChongzhenEmp - satirical China twitter accounts
-We, too: contending with the sexual politics of fieldwork in China - article in
Gender, Place & Culture by Mindi Schneider, Elizabeth Lord & Jessica Wilczak

Erik:
- The Paw Tracker Newsletter
- The Mandalorian

~Special thanks to Maggie Gaus, who joined the Belt and Road Pod team in Dec 2020 and edited this episode~

Thanks for listening!

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China is not the only player in the infrastructure investment game. So how does China's rising engagement under the Belt and Road intersect with investments of other countries? Jessica Liao shares multiple examples in which China's engagement in infrastructure investments, as well as in other areas of export investment management (e.g. export credit agencies), provoke competition with and sometimes the weakening of standards among other investor countries.

Read the following articles by Jessica:
1) Panda Paw article "Easy Money and Political Opportunism: How China and Japan's High-Speed Rail Competition in Indonesia drives financially risky projects"
2) "Geoeconomics, easy money, and political opportunism: the Perils under China and Japan's high-Speed rail competition." (2020) by Jessica Liao & Saori Katada. Contemporary Politics
3) "The Club-based Climate Regime and OECD Negotiations on Restricting Coal-fired Power Export Finance" (2020) by Jessica Liao. Global Policy.

And check out our recommendations:
Jessica: China Goes Green: Coercive Environmentalism for a Troubled Planet by Yifei Li and Judith Shapiro

Juliet: Adam Smith in Beijing by Giovanni Arrighi

Erik: Hugh Hewitt's interview "The EXIM Bank: Now more than ever - Chairman Kimberly Reed makes the case to Hugh Hewitt"

~Special thanks to Maggie Gaus, who joined the Belt and Road Pod team in Dec 2020 and edited this episode~

Thanks for listening!

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Countries along the Belt and Road face major strategic technical and political questions when considering Chinese assistance in the telecommunications field. In this episode, Dr. DingFei discusses two articles on Chinese telecoms investments in Ethiopia. Through the lenses of Ethiopian state-Chinese company negotiations as well as employment practices, she explains how Ethiopian actors have corralled Chinese company interests to better serve their priorities and put bounds on their dominance of the Ethiopian telecommunications system by introducing inter-firm competition.

See Dr. DingFei's relevant publications here:
1) Chinese Telecommunications Companies in Ethiopia: The Influences of Host Government Intervention and Inter-firm Competition. (2020) The China Quarterly
2) Employee Management Strategies of Chinese Telecommunications Companies in Ethiopia: Half-way Localization and Internationalization. (2020) Journal of Contemporary China

Check out our recommendations!

Ding
1) Africa's Shadow Rise: China and the Mirage of African Economic Development, Pádraig Carmody, Peter Kragelund, and Ricardo Reboredo, September 2020

Erik
1) Going Local: An Assessment of China’s Administrative-Level Activity in Latin America and the Caribbean, Margaret Myers, December 2020
2) How To with John Wilson, HBO

Juliet
1) Media Politics in China: Improvising Power Under Authoritarianism, Maria Repnikova, June 2017

~Special thanks to Maggie Gaus, who joined the Belt and Road Pod team in Dec 2020 and edited this episode~

Thanks for listening!

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Who makes decisions about project approval, design, and the pursuit of sustainability - in China, in recipient countries, and beyond? A recent report entitled, 'Belt and Road Decision-making in China and Recipient Countries: How and To What Extent Does Sustainability Matter?' breaks this question down artfully to trace the interests and institutional structures shaping BRI projects.

Listen to our interview with two of the three the authors, Thomas Hale (Associate Professor of Global Public Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford) and Johannes Urpelainen (Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz Professor of Energy, Resources and Environment at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and founding director of ISEP) and check out our recommendations!

Erik
1) Ys, Joanna Newsom

Johannes
1) De-carbonizing the Belt and Road, Climateworks Foundation, September 2019
2) The Emperor's New Road: China and the Project of the Century, Jonathan Hillman
3) The Initiative for Sustainable Energy Policy at Johns Hopkins SAIS

Tom
1) Ministry for the Future, Kim Stanley Robinson

Juliet
1) On China's New Silk Road, Mary Kay Magistad

~Special thanks to Maggie Gaus, who has joined the Belt and Road Pod team and edited this episode~

Thanks for listening!

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This is Episode 1 of our sub-series "Environmental Issues along the Belt and Road"

The series considers the complexities of Chinese actors' impacts on the environment, extractive activities, and role in driving sustainability solutions from the sands of the Mekong River to lithium mines in Argentina. 

China produces 80% of the world's solar panels, over 60% of all wind turbines, and more electric vehicles than the US and the EU combined. In this episode, we ask how China became so dominant in clean energy technology manufacturing, how its products are exported to other countries trying to transition their energy systems, and what impacts the clean energy tech sector is having in places where manufacturing occurs. 

We interview 3 experts in related topics: 

Anders Hove is Senior Research Fellow at the China Energy Research Programme at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies. Previously, he was Project Director for the Sino-German Energy Transition project at GIZ, and a non-resident fellow at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University. Anders co-hosts the Environment China podcast. Related reading here, here and here. 

Dr. Cecilia Springer is a Principal at Global Efficiency Intelligence and Co-director of the Industrial Electrification Center. She has over 10 years of experience conducting technical research on energy policy and industrial decarbonization, with a regional focus on U.S., China, and Southeast Asia. She is a non-resident at the Global China Initiative (formerly the assistant director) at the BU Global Development Policy Center where she led the Energy and Climate research group and was a post-doctoral fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center. Related reading here, here and here. 

Dr. Nikita Sud is Professor of the Politics of Development at the University of Oxford and Governing Body Fellow of Wolfson College. She is author of the books "Liberalization, Hindu Nationalism and The State: A Biography of Gujarat" and "The Making of Land and the Making of India." Her work explores the transition to renewable energy, and the institutional, political and financial mechanisms that underlie this in regions that are geostrategically crucial, while being environmentally highly vulnerable. We discuss her research on Rempang Eco City, a planned Chinese investment of Solar PV manufacturing in Indonesia. 

Thanks for listening!

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The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Region is vitally important to China, particularly as a source of oil but also increasingly as a staging ground for China's forays into global politics. Lucille Greer (@Lucille_Greer_), an expert on China-MENA relations, sheds light on a range of topics from the role of Xinjiang in China's Islamic world relations to the 'strategic alliance' between China and Iran.

Lucille has written extensively on the topic, see for example,
- "Last Among Equals: The China-Iran Partnership in a Regional Context,"
- "Solidarity and Strain: China and the Middle East During COVID-19,"
- "The Chinese Islamic Association in the Arab World: the Use of Islamic Soft Power in Promoting Silence on Xinjiang,"
- "The Chinese Piece in Iran's War Games," and
- "China's Bet on Assad: The Lucrative and Risky Business of Postwar Reconstruction."

And check out our recommendations!
Erik
1) China Africa Project Podcast, Mark Bohlund "China, Bondholders, and the Worsening African Debt Crisis"
2) The Joys of Cordless Vaccuums

Lucille
1) Experts in related fields: Mohammed Turki Al-Sudairi (@MohammedSudairi), Wu BingBing (Peking U. Institute of Arab-Islamic Culture),  Wang Suolao (Peking U. Center for Middle East Studies), Ariane Tabatabai (@ArianeTabatabai), Jonathan Fulton (@jonathanfulton), John Calabrese (American U. Middle East-Asia Project)
2) All About China - Middle East Institute
3) Bourse & Bazaar - an online hub for news, insights, research, and events on Iran
4) CGTN Arabic music video on COVID-19 referenced during our interview

Juliet
1) Bear Talk: Mandarin language podcast on a weird mix of technology insights, book reviews, and personal improvement tips - a good way for intermediate and advanced Mandarin speakers to get some listening practice in (and tune out of current events and politics)
2) Sold Out: Rethinking Housing in America, a new podcast by KQED on California's housing crisis.

Thanks for listening!

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China is a leader in global power generation - both through fossil fuel and clean energy technologies. Chinese capital has been involved in establishing at least 777 power plants across the world, providing 186.5 GW of power generation capacity. To track China's impact on global power generation, Boston University's Global China Initiative is launching "China's Global Power Database" which Erik & Juliet discuss with BU's Cecilia Han Springer and Ma Xinyue. This database tracks all the world's power plants financed by Chinese foreign direct investment and/or China's two global policy banks, the China Development Bank and the Export-Import Bank of China. The database is extensive, gets all the way down to plant level details, and is completely open source and publicly available.

Check out the China's Global Power Database for yourself: http://www.bu.edu/cgp/

And check out our recommendations:
Erik
1) Follow @ChinaCamMonitor for good updates on China in Cambodia
2) Fiona Apple's new album Fetch the Bolt Cutters
3) Americans: VOTE!

Ma Xinyue
1) Listen to the Korean band: BTS

Cecilia Han Springer:
1) The Political Economy of the Chinese Coal Industry: Black Gold and Blood-Stained Coal by Tim Wright AND
2) FAIR BRI Dataset is forthcoming by the Global China Initiative, will cover the intersections between  (see updates at bu.edu/gdp, subscribe  to their newsletter, or follow on twitter @GDPC_BU)

Juliet:
1) Listen to BU Global China Initiative's weekly seminars on Wednesdays
2) Black China Caucus (@BLKChinaCaucus): a collaborative effort that strives to enhance the presences and participation of Black experts specializing in any aspect aiding in the comprehensive understanding of China. The mission of the BCC is accomplished by the active promotion of Black China specialists as well as the creation of targeted resources aimed at enhancing the professional development and advancement of Black practitioners in the China space.

Thanks for listening!

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Labor is a lightning rod for judgments of the benefits of the Belt and Road: Will Chinese projects generate work opportunities for the host country? Do Chinese employers follow different labor standards than others? When and how do workers speak out against poor labor conditions?

Ivan Franceschini brings a few new angles to the labor question. He knows the domestic labor situation in China well, and draws connections between the domestic context and what is happening in Cambodia today. In his Cambodia research, he looks not only at Cambodian workers but also Chinese workers in the country, and finds more similarities between their precarity than often understood.

Read a few of his new articles, "As far apart as earth and sky," "Outsourcing Exploitation," and "At the Roots of Labour Activism."

And check out our recommendations:
Ivan:
1) Briefing Paper: Reassessing China's Investment Footprint in Cambodia by Mark Grimsditch, Inclusive Development International

Juliet:
1) Afterlives of Chinese Communism (ed. Ivan Franceschini, Nicholas Loubere, Christian Sorace)
2) Dreamwork China (Documentary)
3) Boramey: Ghosts in the Factory (Documentary - coming soon!)

Erik:
1) Belt and Road Decision-Making in China and Recipient Countries: How and To What Extent Does Sustainability Matter? by Thomas hale, Chuyu Liu, Johannes Urpelainen
2) Michael Clayton (film) :)

Thanks for listening!

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Prof. Dr. Lina Benabdallah discusses her latest book, "Shaping the Future of Power: Knowledge production and network-building in China-Africa Relations." Lina looks at China's rise and the Belt and Road beyond the hardware investments - the major infrastructure projects which have been most emphasized. She compares three major types of professionalization interventions: military and security cooperation, media and journalist training, and educational exchanges such as those done through Confucius Institutes. She suggests that these person-to-person engagements in Africa have far reaching impacts and constitute an important angle on Chinese global engagements often less understood and studied.

Recommendations
Lina: The Continent - a weekly newspaper compiling the best reporting across Africa, produced by the Mail & the Guardian.
Erik: Africa is a Country - covering opinion, analysis, and new writing on Africa
Juliet: On the topic of soft power, I recommend two very nationalistic Chinese blockbusters that portray Chinese development cooperation and aid missions - one in Africa called "Wolf Warrior II" (kickass trailer, random analysis) and one in the Mekong Region (less about aid more just cops, fighting, and explosions but based on real events) called "Operation Mekong" (trailer). Lina affirms that she shows Wolf Warrior in her classes :)

Thanks for listening!

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In this episode, Dr. Tyler Harlan breaks down the discourses vs. reality of the green turn in the Belt and Road Initiative since Xi Jinping announced it in 2017. He describes the state of knowledge and realities of implementation of the three main aspects of the 'Green Belt and Road': green finance, green energy, and green development cooperation. He also reflects on his research on rural development within China and on China's renewable energy investments across the Mekong Region to shed light on specific cases explored.

Check out his article, entitled "Green development or greenwashing? A political ecology perspective on China’s green Belt and Road" here or get in touch via twitter (@beltandroadpod) for help accessing a copy!

Recommendations:
Tyler
1) The puzzle of China’s missing solar and wind finance along the Belt and Road Parts 1 & 2 (Panda Paw Dragon Claw, Ma Tianjie)

2) Reports on how hydropower could be reduced/changed/replaced with investment in solar and wind: Brain Eyler on Chinese Solar Diplomacy in China Dialogue and Jeff Opperman of WWF on hydropower on free flowing rivers

Erik
1) Shaping the Future of Power: Knowledge Production and Network-Building in China-Africa Relations (latest book by Lina Benabdallah)

2) Killing Eve - Phoebe Waller-Bridge

Juliet
1) Forgotten Kingdom: Nine Years in Yunnan 1939-48 (by Peter Goulyar)

Thanks for listening!

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How does Chinese capital alter center-periphery relations in Kenya?

Can peripheral groups have meaningful agency with Chinese state entities?

Who determines, and what is considered "local" in local content agreements built into Chinese-financed infrastructure projects?

On this Episode, Erik sits down Elisa Gambino to speak about her forthcoming paper entitled: "Chinese participation in Kenyan Transport Infrastructure: Reshaping Power-Geometries" that looks to answer these questions and more by using Kenya's Lamu Port as a case study.   

Elisa Gambino is a doctoral researcher on the African Governance and Space project at the University of Edinburgh’s Centre of African Studies. You can read her prior writing on labor relations at the Lamu port here https://theasiadialogue.com/2020/02/26/job-insecurity-labour-contestation-and-everyday-resistance-at-the-chinese-built-lamu-port-site-in-kenya/

Recommendations:

Elisa: 1) Tales of Hope, Tastes of Bitterness by Miriam Driessen
2) Invisible China: A Journey Through Ethnic Borderlands by Colin Legerton and Jacob Rawson

Erik: 1) Putting a Dollar Amount on China's Loans in the Developing World by Huang Yufang and Deborah Brautigam
2) For the American audience: Moving to a mid-tier American city. They are more dynamic than coastal cities give them credit for and one can actually afford to live in them! Added bonus if you move to a swing state! 

Thanks for listening!

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In this episode, Juliet and Erik sit down with Dr. Xu Liang from Peking University's School of International Studies to talk about his latest research that chronicles historical and modern-day ethnic Chinese garment production in Newcastle, South Africa.

Dr. Xu Liang's latest article "Factory, family and industrial frontier: A Socioeconomic study of Chinese clothing firms in Newcastle, South Africa" can be found here. (link)

 

Thanks for listening!

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After a year of record breaking drought, the Mekong River water has level reached a historical low. Continued water stress, which is likely due to climate change, will permanently change the ecology of the region and water stress is already impacting the lives and livelihoods of millions of people across the region dependent upon the river. Proponents of hydrological dam development along the Mekong, which is primarily done by Chinese developers both in China and in downstream countries (Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam), have emphasized the potential for dams to regulate water flow. But recent conditions have raised questions as to whether dams have exacerbated current water stress and how dams could be differently managed to relieve drought conditions. They also have galvanized calls for stronger mechanisms for transnational information sharing and governance - China currently considers water management data a state secret and does not consult downstream countries about the management of its domestic dams. Brian Eyler of the Stimson Center and Alan Basist of Eyes on Earth discuss with Erik Myxter-Iino the growing upstream/downstream river governance issues that have arisen as a result and the future environmental, socioeconomic, and political challenges raised.

Read related articles:
1. How China Turned off the Tap on the Mekong River (Brian Eyler, Stimson Center)
2. Science Shows Chinese Dams are Devastating the Mekong (Brian Eyler, Foreign Policy)
3. Understanding the Mekong's Hydrological Conditions (Alan Basist & Claude Williams, Mekong River Commission)

Recommendations
Brian
In the Dragon's Shadow: Southeast Asia in the Chinese Century by Sebastian Strangio

Erik
Capital & Ideology by Thomas Piketty

Thanks for listening!

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On this episode, Erik speaks with Dr. Xiao Han on her latest work co-authored by Michael Webber - “From Chinese dam building in Africa to the Belt and Road Initiative: Assembling infrastructure projects and their linkages" that was published in the 77th volume of the journal of Political Geography.

Dr. Xiao Han is a postdoctoral research fellow at University of Melboure’s Centre for Contemporary Chinese Studies. 

Recommendations: 

Dr. Xiao Han: 

1. Cooking - COVID has all of us anxious, finding time to cook and bake goods is relaxing 

Erik: 

1. The Code of Capital How the law creates wealth and inequality by Katharina Pistor 
2. A paper subscription to the NYTimes 

Thanks for listening!

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On this episode, Erik and Juliet speak with Dr. Galen Murton - Assistant Professor at the School of Integrated Sciences at James Madison University - about how China is establishing infrastructure across one of the most unforgiving landscapes in the world. Along the border between Nepal and Tibet, transport and energy infrastructure development are transforming lives and forging a new paradigm of geopolitical engagement between China and its South Asian neighbors.

1) “Trans-Himalayan Power Corridors: Infrastructural Politics and China’s Belt and Road Initiative in Nepal."

2) “Facing the Fence: The Production and Performance of a Himalayan Border in Global Contexts.”


Recommendations:
Galen - Anything written about Nepal by Sam Cowan and Broughton Coburn

Juliet - Asymmetrical Neighbors: Borderland State Building between China and Southeast Asia by Enze Han

Erik - Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy by David Zucchino 

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Justin Haruyama joins Juliet, Erik, and Sisi (welcome to our new team member/producer!) to talk about China-Zambia relations, from the history of Chinese aid in Zambia to the complex people-to-people relations that characterize this bilateral relationship.

Justin Haruyama is an instructor of anthropology at The University of British Columbia whose research explores diverse forms of relationality enabled by Chinese-African encounters, ranging from intimacy and fellowship, to exclusion and xenophobia, to mutual dependence and obligation. He is currently working on a book entitled Mining for Coal and Souls: Modes of Relationality in Emerging Chinese-Zambian Worlds that examines the controversial presence of Chinese migrants and investors in Zambia today. 

Articles:

• Justin Haruyama, "'South-South' Capitalist Extractive Patriarchy" in Transforming Anthropology (2025)
• Justin Haruyama, "Jehovah's Witnesses Are Learning Chinese to Evangelize in Zambia" in Anthropology News (2025)
• Justin Haruyama, "Shortcut English: Pidgin Language, Racialization, and Symbolic Economies at a Chinese-Operated Mine in Zambia" in African Studies Review (2023)

Recommendations:

Justin:

• Sapiens Podcast (Justin's episode comes out in May!)
• Mingwei Huang, Reconfiguring Racial Capitalism: South Africa in the Chinese Century (Duke University Press, 2024)
• Di Wu, Affective Ecounters: Everyday Life among Chinese Migrants in Zambia (Routledge, 2021)

Erik:

• The Seed of the Sacred Fig (2024)
• I'm Still Here (2024)

Sisi:

• Jemima Pierce, The Predicament of Blackness: Postcolonial Ghana and the Politics of Race (University of Chicago Press, 2013)

Juliet:

• Get on BlueSky!
• Northwestern University's 2023 commencement speech by Illinois governor JB Pritzker

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In the rapidly evolving context of a world impacted by the novel corona virus, Johan van de Ven discusses travel bans, material aid and donations, and border restrictions between China and Belt and Road Initiative partner countries. He focuses particularly on incidents of anti-Chinese discrimination in Moscow, material assistance to China given by countries from Thailand to Turkey, and stalls in Chinese infrastructural projects abroad.

Check out Johan's articles in the Jamestown Foundation's China Brief:
- Fair Weather Friends: The Impact of the Coronavirus on the Strategic Partnership between Russia and China?
- Limited Payoffs: What have BRI Investments Delivered for China Amid the Coronavirus Outbreak?

Recommendations:
Johan: Panda Paw Dragon Claw's recent article, "Railpolitik: the strengths and pitfalls of Chinese-financed African Railways", Chinese Storytellers Newsletter, and for de-stressing: Parks and Recreation

Juliet: Naomi Klein’s Coronavirus Capitalism video

Erik: Whistleblower: My journey to Silicon Valley and Justice at Uber by Susan Fowler, Know My Name: A Memoir by Chanel Miller, and for de-stressing: Curb Your Enthusiasm's latest season

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Oyuna Baldakova, a PhD Candidate at the Free University of Berlin, shares her research on Chinese investment and Belt and Road developments in Russia (Lake Baikal, Siberia) and Central Asia. She explores how conflicting interests among local elites and domestic political leaders have fueled anti-Chinese sentiments and protests against BRI projects, as well as the implications of China's involvement in Central Asia for European diplomacy in the region.

Our discussion is based on her two articles on the MERICS Blog:
- Protests along the BRI: China's prestige project meets growing resistance
- China's Central Asian connection

Recommendations:
Oyuna:
- China's Western Horizon by Daniel Markey
- Song of the Tree (Film)
Erik:
- Inclusive Development International's tools for navigating engagement with the AIIB
- Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Film)
Juliet:
- Social Contagion: Microbiological Class War in China on the Chuangcn.org blog 

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Prof. Dr. Linda Tjia explains the costs and benefits, the links and disconnects, and the domestic and global implications of the China-Europe Freight Train Initiative which connects multiple areas of Western China through Central Asia all the way to Europe. Having worked in the railway sector before her academic career, Linda walks Erik and Juliet through Chongqing business dealings with HP, trade imbalances and "empty return trains" between China and Europe, and the logistical and political challenges of navigating new rail paths through Central Asia.

Our conversation is based on Prof. Tjia's recently published article, "The Unintended and Undesirable Consequences of the Politicization of the Belt and Road's China-Europe Freight Train Initiative"

Recommendations
Juliet
Great Games, Local Rules: The New Great Power Contest in Central Asia by Alexander Cooley

Erik
China Renews its "Belt and Road" Push for Global Sway by Keith Bradsher
and Douban.com (the Chinese social networking service website that allows registered users to record information and create content related to film, books, music, recent events, and activities in Chinese cities.) which I've been enjoying recently!

Linda
Asymmetry and International Relationships by Dr. Brently Womack 

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Juliet discusses the book "Last Days of the Mighty Mekong" with author Brian Eyler, Senior Fellow and Director of The Stimson Center’s Southeast Asia Program. Brian shares insights into the development politics of China's (and other countries') hydropower dam construction, the environmental impacts of dams, and the resulting shifts in the day-to-day reality of lives of communities living in along the river. His book is based on over a decade living and traveling along the Mekong River, and documents a watershed moment of change in one of the most culturally vibrant and biologically important river systems in the world.

Get yourself a copy of Brian's book, Last Days of the Mighty Mekong 

And check out our recommendations:
Brian: Richard Powers' The Overstory
Juliet: Milton Osborne's The Mekong: Turbulent Past, Uncertain Future (see also a review on Brian's blog East by Southeast)

Thanks for listening!

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