Corridors, chokepoints and the contradictions of the Belt and Road Initiative

Abstract

ABSTRACT In popular, scholarly, business and governmental conceptualisations, ‘corridors’ are identified as fundamental components of connectivity and central to the China-led Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). However, given how the BRI has challenged socio-spatial relations among participant states, elevating the corridor as the dominant mechanism framing the BRI is incomplete and misleading. Paradoxically, while some evidence on the ground supports the existence of functioning corridors, the BRI is equally characterised by chokepoints – processes that restrict the flow of goods, resources, services and information. Although BRI programmes are widely rendered as networks of connectivity via corridors, the analytics of chokepoints, and the frictions they generate, have not been critically applied to research on the BRI. Identifying and responding to the importance of this gap, we propose a ‘corridor-chokepoint dialectic’ to critically evaluate the operations of BRI development and apply this dialectical concept to multiple BRI-affiliated countries bordering China, including Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Nepal and Myanmar. Each of these countries play host to major corridors projected within widespread BRI agendas and lend both discursive and material support for ‘new Silk Road’ connectivity. However, contrary to state rhetoric and popular media depictions, an array of corridors in conjunction with chokepoints more accurately defines the operational realities and challenges of BRI progress across Asia.