The Belt and Road Podcast – Details, episodes & analysis

Enze Han joins Juliet and Keren to discuss all things China in Southeast Asia, from migration to tourism to pig butchering scams, and much more.

Enze Han is Associate Professor at the Department of Politics and Public Administration at the University of Hong Kong. His research interests include the international relations of East Asia, China's relations with Southeast Asia, Southeast Asian politics, and ethnic politics in China. Professor Han received a Ph.D in Political Science from the George Washington University. He is the author of The Ripple Effect: China's Complex Presence in Southeast Asia (2024).

Recommendations:

Enze:

• Spice: The 16th-Century Contest that Shaped the Modern World by Roger Crowley (2024)

Keren: 

• 米拉蒂 (Milati) by Yan Geling (2023).

Juliet:

• Global fertility has collapsed, with profound economic consequences. The Economist (2023).
• Ezra Klein: The Deep Conflict Between Our Work and Parenting Ideals
• You're Wrong About: The Tradwife Rises

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Jess DiCarlo joins Juliet and Keren for a dynamic discussion about China's identity as an infrastructural state, the myth of the debt trap narrative, cycling as method (and Jess's experience biking along the China-Laos train route), the impact of the BRI in Laos, and much more.
 
Dr. Jess DiCarlo is an assistant professor in Geography, Environment, and Asian Studies at the University of Utah. She has been a Wilson China Fellow, a Public Intellectual Program Fellow of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, and the Chevalier Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Transportation and Development in China at the University of British Columbia's Institute of Asian Research in the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs. She holds a Ph.D. in geography from the University of Colorado Boulder and a masters in development studies from the University of California Berkeley.

Her research focuses on China, its borderlands, infrastructure, issues at the environment-society nexus, and China's global integration. DiCarlo is on the editorial board of The People’s Map of Global China (the launch of which we covered on this show) and its related Global China Pulse journal, and the co-founder of the Second Cold War Observatory and co-host of its podcast, The Roundtable podcast.

Recommendations:

Jess:

• Ecological States: Politics of Science and Nature in Urbanizing China by Jesse Rodenbiker 

Juliet:

• The Three Body Problem series on Netflix, adapted from the trilogy by Cixin Liu

Keren:

• Peter Hessler's writings, specifically River Town, Oracle Bones, Country Driving

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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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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)

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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)

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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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