Resilience of coastal human-environment composite systems of the 21st century maritime silk road: Theory, model, and spatial patterns.

Against the backdrop of disrupted global supply and value chains, impacted geopolitical landscapes, and policy shifts in developed countries, the global economy faces significant uncertainties, which have exerted various influences on China's foreign investment. China has put forward the initiative of jointly building the "Silk Road Economic Belt" and the "21st-Century Maritime Silk Road". The performance of foreign direct investment is a core issue related to the security and returns of a country's overseas assets as well as the success or failure of multinational enterprises' internationalization strategies. With changes in the global economic pattern, various industrial transformations, the expansion of foreign investment scale, and unstable political situations, this paper, based on literature review, finds that the impact of foreign investment risks is mainly introduced from factors such as political, economic, social and cultural, and legal factors. Finally, looking into the future, it is proposed that in politics, more efforts should be made to strengthen cooperation with other countries; enterprises should enhance their own risk management capabilities; and in terms of investment targets, more investment should be directed towards emerging industries.

The impact of port investment along the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road on regional port network connectivity and its imbalance

The 21st Century Maritime Silk Road (MSR) is a key component of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), launched in 2013 to enhance global connectivity and foster economic cooperation. By promoting infrastructure development, trade facilitation, and cultural exchange, the MSR seeks to strengthen maritime connectivity, boost regional economic integration, and create new growth opportunities for participating countries. The MSR policy has a positive promoting effect on the economic construction and port development of China’s coastal ports. This study established a difference-in-difference model (DID) to explore the impact of MSR policies on SO2 emissions from coastal and inland ports in China. We searched for panel data from 34 coastal and inland ports in China from 2008 to 2023, and based on this panel data, established a DID model for regression analysis. The regression analysis results indicate that the implementation of MSR policy has a significant positive impact on SO2 emissions from coastal and inland ports in China. Some control variables, such as the total amount of imported goods and domestic emission control area (DECA) policies, also have a significant negative impact on SO2 emissions, while the number of berths, population, and total amount of exported goods have a significant positive impact on SO2 emissions. Based on the regression results of the model, we have proposed some suggestions for port operators and relevant governments to better adapt to MSR policies, promote economic development and environmental protection of ports.

Diffusion of low-carbon shipping along the 21st century maritime silk road: From complex network perspective

This thesis takes Shenzhen as its research subject, analyzing the distribution of its marine educational resources, cultural dissemination models, and policy support systems. It proposes an integrated strategy for marine cultural dissemination that combines "education + technology + tourism." The study reveals that Shenzhen holds significant advantages in marine science education, the application of digital technology, and the integration of coastal tourism with culture. Nevertheless, there is still room for improvement in resource integration, public participation, and international communication capabilities. By establishing a marine cultural dissemination ecosystem characterized by "government leadership, social participation, and technological empowerment," Shenzhen has the potential to elevate marine awareness from the "cognitive level" to the "identational level," offering cultural support for the construction of the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road. As a key coastal city in China, Shenzhen possesses abundant marine resources and a rich historical and cultural heritage. Against the strategic backdrop of building a "marine power," Shenzhen shoulders the significant mission of constructing a global marine central city. This paper uses Shenzhen as a case study to explore the current status, challenges, and strategies of marine knowledge education and cultural dissemination in China. By examining Shenzhen's practices and innovations in marine knowledge education and cultural dissemination, it summarizes lessons learned to provide insights for other coastal cities, aiding in the enhancement of public marine awareness and the promotion of the prosperity and development of marine culture. The ocean is the largest expanse on Earth's surface and is also a crucial resource for human survival and development-a Resource Treasure House. With the rapid advancement of global economic integration and technology, the ocean's role in the national economy, politics, military, and culture has become increasingly significant. As a major maritime nation, China has vast waters and abundant marine resources. However, compared to other maritime powers, there remains a significant gap in the popularization of marine knowledge and the dissemination of marine culture in China. Shenzhen, as a pioneer of China's reform and opening-up, has utilized its unique geographical advantages and robust economic power to become a pivotal city for promoting marine education and cultural exchange.

This article challenges contemporary (2020 CE) assumptions regarding the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road that influence how the future of a rising China and its global impact are imagined. By quantifying the present and projecting it into the future, the future archaeology of abandoned infrastructure (ports) and architecture (ships) is evaluated alongside contemporary archival materials and cartographic imagery in a hypothetical scenario where, in 2520 CE, an archaeology team explores the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road. Theoretically framed within anthropological archaeology and employing maritime archaeology as a method, the team visits three port sites and identifies the remains of all 122 ships that sank between the East China Sea and the Mediterranean between 2016 and 2020 CE. The nature and extent of trade are revealed, the transnational maritime cultural landscape is reconstructed, and the outcome is a strikingly different understanding of the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road.

To establish the cross-border logistics hub network for China's Belt and Road Initiative, this study proposes a multi-objective hub location model that integrates two novel metrics: hub network utilization rate and hub economic stimulating effect. These metrics are formulated to evaluate resource efficiency and regional economic growth potential, respectively, and are incorporated into the optimization framework. The model is solved using the non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm III (NSGA-III) with a training population, yielding a Pareto-optimal solution of 44 international logistics hubs across the Belt and Road regions, including Asia, Europe, West Africa, Oceania, and Central America. Results demonstrate that prioritizing these two objectives significantly enhances their performance: every time doubling the cost, the hub network utilization rate increases to 1.71 times and the hub economic stimulating effect rises to 1.60 times the baseline. This highlights the model's theoretical and practical value in improving resource efficiency and fostering sustainable economic development for the Belt and Road countries at lower costs. Key management insights include advancing cross-border railroads linking China and the Middle East to integrate the China Railway Express with East China, incorporating strategic ports in Oceania and North Africa into the “21st-Century Maritime Silk Road”, enhancing seaport hubs in South China and Southern Europe, and exploring direct routes between western China and South America. These measures aim to strengthen connectivity, optimize hub utilization, and amplify economic synergies across the Belt and Road network.

The strategic maritime environment of the Indian Ocean (IO) has undergone significant transformation over the past two decades. The shift in regional focus from territorial to maritime borders has had a profound impact on international relations, driven by evolving defense and security dynamics. This paper explores the historical context of maritime geopolitics in the Indian Ocean and examines the growing presence and competition among the United States, China, and India as the primary strategic players. The United States, in strengthening its partnership with India, seeks to counterbalance China’s expanding influence in the region. China, through its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, aims to consolidate its economic and strategic footprint under its “Common Future, Common Growth” vision. This paper analyzes the hegemonic struggle in the Indian Ocean and presents policy recommendations for Pakistan’s maritime strategy.

Southeast Asia holds a significant role in China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), particularly in the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road (MSR). Despite the substantial power asymmetry between Southeast Asian nations and China, their responses to the BRI vary, falling into categories such as “the embracers”, “the cautious collaborators”, and “the sceptics”. Vietnam, specifically, has been categorised as “the sceptic” due to the absence of BRI-labelled projects and limited uptake of BRI loans, despite offering diplomatic support to the initiative and joining the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) as a founding member. This article contends that such a label fails to capture Vietnam’s overall economic engagement with China, which can be characterised as “ambivalent engagement”. It argues that while Vietnam exhibits passive resistance towards the BRI, it actively engages in trade, investment, project contracting in energy sector, and economic corridor cooperation with China. This characterisation aligns with Vietnam’s established strategy of engaging with China through a combination of “both cooperation and struggle”. These diverse patterns of agency can be understood through the lens of elite legitimation and external alternatives. By doing so, this article seeks to enrich Kuik’s typology on host-country agency within the context of Southeast Asian states’ responses to the BRI and economic collaboration with China, thereby contributing to the literature on the asymmetry-authority framework.

The “Belt and Road” initiative centrally embodies the Chinese government’s new concept of further strengthening regional cooperation and opening up to the outside world. The “21st Century Maritime Silk Road” (MSR) is a key component of this initiative. This study uses the MSR policy as a quasi-natural experiment to explore its impact on the efficiency of China’s coastal ports and the mechanisms underlying this effect, employing a difference-in-differences (DID) model based on panel data from major coastal ports in China between 2011 and 2022. The study finds that the policy of the MSR can significantly contribute to the efficiency of ports along the route, and this conclusion still holds after a series of robustness tests that take into account endogeneity issues and the exclusion of other policy interferences. From the analysis of heterogeneity, the construction of the MSR can effectively promote port efficiency in the southern region and large cities. From the perspective of the impact mechanism, this policy mainly promotes port efficiency by mentioning the optimization of the human capital structure, the improvement of the level of industrialization, and the construction of infrastructure. The conclusions of the study are of great significance in the advancement of high-quality sustainable development of ports along China’s routes.

The 21st-century Maritime Silk Road initiative by the Chinese government has garnered growing global attention. As pivotal facilitators of international trade, the maritime routes and ports along this route are attracting the interest of various stakeholders. There is a pressing need for extensive research to augment the existing theoretical frameworks. This paper introduces a Self-Organizing Map (SOM) neural network-based methodology for port function clustering, applied to 24 major ports spanning from the South China Sea to the ASEAN region in 2023. The clustering outcomes are cross-validated against port rankings derived from Principal Component Analysis. The study reveals several key insights: (1) Singapore Port, Hong Kong Port, Shenzhen Port, and Guangzhou Port emerge as the principal shipping hubs within the region; (2) The relationship between China and Singapore is identified as a linchpin for the sustainable development of the 21st-century Maritime Silk Road; (3) Guangdong Province is highlighted as a central economic and logistical node. Finally, the recommendations for the accelerated development of the Hainan Free Trade Port and Fujian Coastal Port is concluded.

ABSTRACT In 2013, China launched a cooperative initiative to build the “Silk Road Economic Belt” and the “21st Century Maritime Silk Road”. Based on the data of import and export trade between 57 countries along the “Belt and Road” and China from 2010 to 2021, this paper conducts research using the spatial Durbin model. The results show that the double fixed-effects model is optimal. The 57 countries along the “Belt and Road” have significant positive spatial spillover effects on trade with China, among which economic development, educational development, and transportation accessibility have significantly promoted trade between the countries along the “Belt and Road” and China.

Deep learning-driven land cover monitoring and landscape ecological health assessment: A dynamic study in coastal regions of the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor from 2000 to 2023

Fishery plays an important role in world trade; however, the embodied energy associated with fishery remains incompletely quantified. In this study, we applied the multi-regional input-output (MRIO) model and logarithmic mean Divisia index (LMDI) approach to understand the evolution and drivers of embodied energy in the intermediate and final fishery trade between China and countries along the 21st century Maritime Silk Road (MSR) from 2006 to 2021. The findings are as follows: (1) Embodied energy in the intermediate fishery trade averaged 92.2% of embodied energy from the total fishery trade. China has gradually shifted from being a net exporter to a net importer of embodied energy in intermediate, final, and total fishery trade with countries along the MSR. (2) From a regional perspective, the embodied energy in China’s fishery trade with Japan, South Korea, and Southeast Asia comprises the majority of the embodied energy from China’s total fishery trade (82.0% on average annually). From a sectoral perspective, petroleum, chemical and non-metallic mineral products, and transport equipment were prominent in the embodied energy of China’s intermediate fishery trade (64.0% on average annually). (3) Economic output increases were the main contributors to the increasing embodied energy in all types of fishery trade in China. The improvement in energy efficiency effectively reduced the embodied energy in all types of fishery trade in China, but its negative driving force weakened in recent years owing to minor energy efficiency improvements. Understanding the embodied energy transactions behind the intermediate and final fishery trade with countries along the MSR can provide a theoretical reference for China to optimize its fishery trade strategy and save energy.

The Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road spearheaded by General Secretary Xi Jinping offers a practical framework for fostering a fresh approach to international relations between China and its neighboring countries. This study thoroughly examines how the Belt and Road Initiative contributes to shaping a new form of international relations between China and its neighboring regions from a constructivist viewpoint. This is achieved through qualitative research, literature analysis, and inductive methodologies. Under the constructivist perspective, The Belt and Road Initiative has transformed the dynamic between China and its neighboring nations on various levels. When looking at it from a horizontal perspective, the focus is on highlighting the unique aspects and qualities of international interactions, such as "common development", "mutual respect", and "harmonious coexistence".Looking at things from an aerial viewpoint, the Belt and Road Initiative delves into a fresh approach to China's relationships with its neighboring countries across three levels: national, subnational, and regional. China prioritizes establishing innovative international relations with neighboring countries through the Belt and Road initiative to stabilize domestic growth and navigate foreign relations amidst the changing development scenario. Faced with intricate regional dynamics stemming from recent historical shifts, China must steadfastly advance the "Belt and Road" project to cultivate a conducive neighboring atmosphere, fostering the development of a shared human destiny.

The article is devoted to the analysis of the foreign policy strategy of Li Hongzhang, one of the most prominent Chinese diplomats and political figures of the late 19th century. The article examines the activities of the influential dignitary of the Qing Empire in order to establish the status of the state in the international arena. Criticism of Li Hongzhang is due to his concessions to foreign powers, so his policy is considered inconsistent with the national interests of the country. Despite this, his actions can be regarded as a manifestation of a realistic approach to international relations, which in many ways anticipated the pragmatic foreign policy of Western states. The author analyzes the process of transformation of China's role in international relations, its transition from a backward and semi-colonial country to a leading power in the region and the world. Particular attention in the text is paid to the characteristics of the country's foreign policy from the end of the 20th century to the present day. The article attempts to rethink the diplomatic work of Li Hongzhang through the prism of modern international relations and the foreign policy strategy of the PRC. The article analyzes his political views and key moments in his career, including his role in concluding unequal treaties that had long-term consequences for China. The final part of the article provides a comparative description of the two foreign policies, and describes the influence of the new political elite of the PRC on the country's changed role today. The comparison between Li Hongzhang's traditional diplomatic methods and the strategies used by the modern political elite of the PRC includes the following criteria: protecting national interests, using "soft power", strategic partnership and a multilateral approach to international relations. Particular attention is paid to the analysis of the legacy in China's emerging initiatives, such as "One Belt, One Road" (including the "Silk Road Economic Belt" and the "21st Century Maritime Silk Road"). Thus, the author of the article emphasizes the importance of studying the historical context and the role of the individual in it for considering the strategies and courses of the country's foreign policy in the future.

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) serves as China’s blueprint and major strategy for opening-up in the new era. This study theoretically examines three mechanisms of the ‘21st Century Maritime Silk Road’ (CMSR) to promote the opening up of provinces and cities along the line, including the allocation, integration, and circulation mechanisms. Using 2009–2021 data from prefecture-level cities, this study designed a quasi-natural experiment based on the CMSR by combining propensity score matching (PSM) and differences-in-differences (DID) methods. The study findings show CMSR significantly promoted China’s opening-up. Various robustness tests demonstrate that our findings are robust. Mechanism analysis shows that CMSR improved China’s opening-up by promoting the flow of production factors, integrating domestic and international product markets, and accelerating circulation. Heterogeneity analysis shows that CMSR strongly influences large, coastal, and nonprovincial cities. These findings provide a new perspective for evaluating the policy effects of the 21st CMSR.

Innovative strategies and forward thinking on China’s digital maritime law enforcement

The «Belе and Road Initiative» (BRI), proposed by China, marked a new phase in its external openness and growing desire to influence regional and global processes. However, BRI should not be viewed solely as a Chinese blueprint for restructuring Eurasia. The broad interpretative and geographical scope set by Chinese authorities allows flexibility in adapting the initiative to specific regions and countries, which is strategic for modifying or withdrawing commitments as needed. This paper examines why BRI has not become the foundation for a Chinese concept of Eurasia despite its significant impact on regional geopolitics.Our analysis begins with a critical examination of President Xi Jinping's speech at Nazarbayev University in 2013, identifying the nuanced usage of «Eurasia» that primarily refers to the post-Soviet space rather than the entire Eurasian continent. We delve into the subsequent official documents, noting the delay and ambiguity in defining the geographical and conceptual boundaries of BRI. The 2015 document, "Vision and Actions on Jointly Building Silk Road Economic Belt and 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road," illustrates the initiative's extensive and vague geographical scope, indicating that China did not initially aim for a broad Eurasian strategy.By employing Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), we uncover how China's official rhetoric strategically frames BRI. The analysis reveals that Chinese discourse emphasizes bilateral rather than multilateral engagements within Eurasia, reflecting a «point-to-point» rather than a networked approach. This strategic ambiguity allows China to navigate its relationships with key regional players, notably Russia and the Central Asian states, without committing to a comprehensive Eurasian integration framework.The findings highlight the cautious and adaptive nature of China's engagement with Eurasia. The shift from a regional to a global scope in BRI discourse underscores China's pragmatic approach in balancing its regional ambitions with global aspirations.