Silk Road Research Articles

China's Geostrategic Interests in the Indian Ocean Region: Implications for Regional Security and Sino- Indian Relations

Over the last decade, China has increased its footprint and economic power in the Indian Ocean by expanding its influence there. Critical concerns in the Indian Ocean pose a danger to regional security, according to this research. Realist theoryassesses China's economic and military achievements. There is a real possibility that unchecked Chinese development into the Indian Ocean would turn the entire ocean into a "Chinese lake," opening up trade along the Maritime Silk Road. A coalition of impacted and compatible governments is necessary to safeguard maritime interests against China's aggressiveness. The mixed approach employed literature and survey data for qualitative and quantitative research. Basic random sampling was used to sample 150 Lahore residents. Those who are active in policymaking and marine governance are the target audience for these findings, which are meant to educate them on the geopolitical shifts and what they represent for the future of the sector.

Governance of Cross-border Regions & SEZs: The case of Gwadar under CPEC

Purpose: Examining the transformative impact of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a flagship project of China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), this research investigates how CPEC fosters cross-border cooperation and regional development. The research focuses on transnational institution building and the creation of multi-scalar geographies involving diverse public and private agencies, reshaping regional, sub-regional, and local territories. Design/Methodology/Approach: Employing a case study approach, the research focuses on Gwadar, the pivotal node of CPEC where the economic belt meets the maritime silk road. It integrates a literature review, analysis of official documents, and empirical data, supplemented by insights from independent researchers and international organizations such as the World Bank and IMF. Findings: The designation of Gwadar as a Special Economic Zone (SEZ) with a globally competitive deep-sea port has introduced significant economic opportunities. However, multi-scalar interactions have led to tensions between central and local authorities, reflecting conflicts between the Centre-led macroeconomic agenda and its socio-economic sustainability at the local level. Implications/Originality/Value: The research emphasizes the need to rescale political, economic, and social structures to establish sustainable institutions in cross-border regions. It provides policy recommendations for Gwadar's development, drawing lessons from global best practices such as Dubai, Shenzhen, and King Abdullah Economic City.

РЕЛИГИОЗНЫЕ ВЕРОВАНИЯ В СОГДЕ В ЭПОХУ РАННЕГО СРЕДНЕВЕКОВЬЯ

This article examines the religious landscape of Sogdiana in the early Middle Ages, when this region of Central Asia served as a crossroads of cultures and religions along the Silk Road. By examining archaeological finds, written sources and historical data, the authors of the article analyze how Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, Christianity and Islam coexisted and interacted in Sogd, contributing to the formation of the unique religious identity of the region.

УСТЮРТДАГИ КАРВОН ЙЎЛЛАРИ ҲАҚИДА

The article talks about the branches of the Great Silk Road that passed through Ustyurt, developed in the Middle Ages and the Late Middle Ages. It is known that two lines of caravan routes have passed through Ustyurt since the Middle Ages. One of the roads went through Central Ustyurt to the Volga and the Urals, while the other road went to Mangishlaq. The first road, called the Nogai road, connected Khorezm and Bulgar. Maghishlaq highway connected Khorezm and Khazar. The author focuses on the development of caravan routes in Ustyurt during the period of the Golden Horde and during the reign of Amir Temur and his successors. After Amir Temur's military campaigns against the Golden Horde, traffic along these caravan routes ceased for some time, but subsequently the great commander Amir Temur rebuilt these trade routes. The article also provides information about the first sources and the first research works about caravan routes in Ustyurt.

Pakistan’s Infrastructural & Domestic Challenges to Connectivity with Central Asia

This paper analyzes the challenges and responses to regional connectivity between Pakistan and Central Asia. The historical and geographical proximity of Pakistan and Central Asia highlights the importance of reviving the old Silk Route. Pakistan is often called the gateway to the Central Asian states due to its geostrategic location; its significance has further increased with the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), which holds a pivotal role in the region. However, regional connectivity faces numerous challenges. These include political, geographical, economic and infrastructural problems. Geopolitical factors, such as the involvement of external powers and competition for energy supplies, further complicate the situation. The paper in this regard discusses Pakistan’s specific infrastructural and domestic challenges and the roles of regional and global states including neighboring Afghanistan, Iran, India, the major global players such as USA, Russia, China, and the European Union, and Turkiyey,in shaping the connectivity landscape.

Влияние проекта «Великий шелковый путь» на внешнюю политику Турции

. In the modern world, control of transit and communication routes means significant geopolitical influence, in this regard, these routes include various transport and communication networks such as sea lanes, air corridors, land trade routes and internet cables. Control of these routes is of great importance both economically and strategically, therefore, each state prioritizes the control of these routes in its foreign policy. In this regard, Turkey is not an exception. The Ottoman state, the predecessor of the modern Republic of Turkey, considered it important to control the transit channels throughout history. Analyzing the geopolitical effects of the Ottoman conquest of Istanbul also allows us to understand the importance of controlling communication routes in the modern era. Currently, the new Great Silk Road project occupies an important place in Turkish foreign policy, as it will allow the country to strengthen its place in the system of international relations. In the article, research is conducted on the issues mentioned above and the results are discussed.

Heading in the direction of bifurcated networks: Hong Kong's evolution amidst the global submarine cable system

The full understanding of the importance of submarine cables as part of the global network infrastructure in the digital economy era, along with decades of knowledge accumulation in this field, has not prevented Hong Kong from facing increasing difficulties in gaining more access to submarine cable systems since 2017. Given that geopolitical differences between China and the U.S. are dividing the international network infrastructure, the business interests of Hong Kong enterprises and the urban development prospects of the Hong Kong government have been forced to defer to Beijing’s security concerns. Meanwhile, in recent years China has been acquiring data power by modelling the “data collection – data sharing – data space governance” path that the United States and its allies set previously. During this process, the power shaped by China’s unique technological, social and institutional characteristics offers an alternative to American dominance, although it exacerbates the global divergence of internet infrastructure. Many projects along the Belt and Road Initiative and the Digital Silk Road are the examples of China’s data power projection, and will bring opportunities for Hong Kong’s own submarine cables sector and for the city’s role as a super connector in the coming years.

Risk Analysis of Pirate Attacks on Southeast Asian Ships Based on Bayesian Networks

As a bridge for international trade, maritime transportation security is crucial to the global economy. Southeast Asian waters have become a high-incidence area of global piracy attacks due to geographic location and complex security situations, posing a great threat to the development of the Maritime Silk Road. In this study, the factors affecting the risk of pirate attacks are analyzed in depth by using the Global Ship Piracy Attacks Report from the IMO Global Integrated Shipping Information System (GISIS) database (i.e., 2013–2022) in conjunction with a Bayesian Network (BN) model, and the Expectation Maximization algorithm is used to train the model parameters. The results show that piracy behaviors and the ship’s risk are the key factors affecting the risk of pirate attacks, and suggestions are made to reduce the risk of pirate attacks. This study develops a theoretical basis for preventing and controlling the risk of pirate attacks on ships, which helps maintain the safety of ship operations.

Evaluating Consolidation Centers of an Integrated Transportation Network under the Belt and Road Initiative

Following the Belt and Road, the Air Silk Road has also been proposed. The coordinated development of multiple transportation modes, including air, land, and water, will create a strong transportation force in node cities. However, the current insufficient supply of cargo in various regions and the lack of integration among different transportation modes result in low transportation efficiency, which in turn affects the further advancement of the Belt and Road. To investigate these issues and attempt to find a solution, we selected 44 candidate cities from the prefecture-level cities in China as nodes based on relevant government policies, and constructed an integrated transportation network. For each node city, we first calculated the values of six classical indicators and then used the CRITIC to assign weights to each indicator. Subsequently, we employed the TOPSIS method combined with Grey Relational Analysis (GRA) to compute the comprehensive score for each node city. Based on the spatial layout and government policies under the BRI, eight cities, including Wuhan, Chongqing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Lianyungang, Hefei, and Dalian, were finally recommended as the consolidation centers of the integrated transportation network. It is hoped that the results of this analysis can provide some insights for the government to outline and build the consolidation centers of the integrated transportation network composed of railway, air, highway, and water routes, which in turn can offer insights for elevating the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) to a new level.

Opportunities and Challenges of China’s Economic Ties with Kazakhstan: Looking Back to Look Forward

This paper examines contemporary Chinese-Kazakhstani political economic ties from the perspective of trade. In particular, it traces the evolution of this relationship before and after the critical juncture of 2013, when the Silk Road Economic Belt was announced in Astana, ushering the era of the Belt and Road Initiative. This paper advances three arguments. First and foremost, Kazakhstan has avoided developing a dependency on the Chinese economy. Its trade autonomy has been maintained before and after the Belt and Road Initiative was launched in 2013, as Kazakhstan benefited from the development of markets alternative to China. Secondly, trade between Kazakhstan and China was mostly focused on natural resources during the immediate pre-BRI years, but it has gradually shifted to a more balanced mix, encompassing intermediate goods, raw materials, and consumer goods. Thirdly, such diversification is the product of an increasingly sophisticated, complex value chain interconnecting Kazakhstan and the rest of the world, including but not limited to China. The growing complexity of these production networks, while certainly beneficial to Chinese firms, has also contributed to Kazakhstan’s multi-vector geopolitical strategy. In this environment, Kazakhstan demonstrates the capability to weather the ongoing deceleration of China’s economy, as the Central Asian country pursues the diversification of its own economy and external economic ties.

Silk Roads, Trade and Territorial Expansion: Kingdom of Georgia in 11th-14th Centuries

Regional or international trade has always played a central role in the history of Georgia. Trade routes made it possible to establish close political, cultural and economic relations with neighboring as well as distant countries. The kingdom of Georgia’s territorial expansion towards Arran, Shirvan, and Armenia in the 11th-13th centuries was largely driven by economic and trade reasons, name-ly the desire to control the regional trade routes which criss-crossed Dvin, Barda, Ganja, Tbilisi, Ani, Trebizond, Ahlat, Tabriz and many other major cities along Georgia’s southern borders. The present article will also pay attention to the changes to the trade routes in the Caucasus region caused by the Mongols and how their invasions changed the kingdom of Georgia’s position in the regional commerce. By mid-13th century new major trade corridors connecting Asia with the Middle East and the Black Sea were geographically distanced from Georgia harming the latter’s geopolitical position in the region.

Research on Optimization Strategies of Regional Cross-Border Transportation Networks—Implications for the Construction of Cross-Border Transport Corridors in Xinjiang

Facility connectivity plays a pioneering role in the Belt and Road Initiative proposed by General Secretary Xi Jinping in 2013. Xinjiang, as the core area of the Silk Road Economic Belt bordering eight Eurasian countries, plays a crucial role in cross-border transportation and humanistic exchanges and is the focus of the national connectivity initiative. While the current analysis on regional accessibility has become more diversified, analyses on long-distance cross-border corridors are still relatively rare. Therefore, this paper takes the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR) of China as the main study area extending westward to the five Central Asian countries. Modified accessibility accounting methods and gravity models are used to analyze the current status of accessibility and the strength of economic ties between Xinjiang and the five Central Asian countries. The results showed that the distance decay effect of transportation accessibility between Xinjiang and the five Central Asian countries is obvious; the constraints of “natural geography + transportation economy” affect the accessibility level from each state in Xinjiang to the five Central Asian countries and shows a trend of strength in the north and weakness in the south. From the optimization of the regional planning road network in a reverse projection, G3033 and other highways and the construction of the Yi-A railroad will improve the status quo of “east-west access but not north-south access” in Xinjiang. The “corridor effect” and spatial polarization characteristics of economic connection intensity from Xinjiang to the five Central Asian countries are significant. This study has important theoretical and practical significance for the construction of cross-border corridors.

A conserved odorant receptor underpins borneol-mediated repellency in culicine mosquitoes.

The use of essential oils derived from the camphor tree to repel mosquitoes is an ancient practice that originated in Southeast Asia and gradually spread to China and across Europe via the Maritime Silk Road. The olfactory mechanisms by which these oils elicit avoidance behavior are unclear. Here we show that plant bicyclic monoterpenoids and borneol specifically activate a neural pathway that originates in the orphan olfactory receptor neuron of the capitate peg sensillum in the maxillary palp, and projects to the mediodorsal glomerulus 3 in the antennal lobe. This neuron co-locates with two olfactory receptor neurons tuned to carbon dioxide and octenol that mediate human-host detection. We also confirm that borneol elicits repellency against human-seeking female mosquitoes. Understanding the functional role of the mosquito maxillary palp is essential to investigating olfactory signal integration and host-selection behavior.

Local supply and long-distance imports: New evidence for the origin of brass, copper and lead at Helgö

Long-running excavations at the ‘central place’ of Helgö in Lake Mälaren uncovered an unprecedented range of primary metal alloys, mainly in association with a Migration-period workshop. Since primary metals are extremely rare in Migration-period contexts, the source(s) of these metals is a central question with the potential to yield new insights into resource acquisition, international contacts and supply and exchange networks in fifth- to early sixth-century Sweden. Using a combination of lead isotope and trace element analyses, we assess the provenance of 19 artefacts of lead, copper and brass, including ingots, rods and casting waste. While the origin of the copper could not be determined with certainty, the results of the brass and lead were intriguing. Three lead melts stem from Swedish lead ore, and represent the earliest direct archaeological evidence for lead extraction in Sweden. By contrast, the brass was imported over long distances. We propose that it reached Helgö as part of a routinized trade with the Byzantine Empire, potentially the eastern Mediterranean region, with one ingot having probable origins in Asia. The results thus indicate both the local exploitation of available ores and far-reaching contacts, which may have extended as far as the Silk Road.

Exploring the Impact of Regional Cooperation on Regional Economic and Social Development: An Empirical Study Based on the Belt and Road Initiative

Regional cooperation plays a pivotal role in driving both regional and global economic growth, and the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) stands as a significant catalyst for the economic and social development of the countries and regions along its routes. Based on economic and social data spanning from 2011 to 2019 across 40 countries, this research employs the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) evaluation method to construct a Regional Economic and Social Development Index. Subsequently, employing a multi-period difference-in-differences model, the study meticulously examines the positive impact of the BRI on the development trajectory of relevant countries. Heterogeneity analysis reveals that the influence of the BRI is notably pronounced in developing nations, China's neighboring countries, and those along the Maritime Silk Road. Our research contributes significantly to elucidating the effects of regional cooperation on regional economic development, thus reinforcing the trajectory of economic globalization. Furthermore, we offer insightful policy recommendations for the future evolution of the Belt and Road Initiative.

The ‘Mystery’ of Lop Nor: Empire, Geographical ‘Problems’ and Climate Change on the Silk Roads

The ‘Mystery’ of Lop Nor: Empire, Geographical ‘Problems’ and Climate Change on the Silk Roads

Ancient Mitochondrial Genomes Provide New Clues in the History of the Akhal-Teke Horse in China.

This study analyzed ancient DNA from the remains of horses unearthed from the Shihuyao tombs. These were found to date from the Han and Tang Dynasties in Xinjiang (approximately 2200 to 1100 years ago). Two high-quality mitochondrial genomes were acquired and analyzed using next-generation sequencing. The genomes were split into two maternal haplogroups, B and D, according to a study that included ancient and contemporary samples from Eurasia. A close genetic affinity was observed between the horse of the Tang Dynasty and Akhal-Teke horses according to the primitive horse haplotype G1. Historical evidence suggests that the ancient Silk Road had a vital role in their dissemination. Additionally, the matrilineal history of the Akhal-Teke horse was accessed and suggested that the early domestication of the breed was for military purposes.

The impact of the Belt and Road Initiative on cities’ capacity for green development—based on data from 280 Chinese cities

ABSTRACT Encouraging the green development of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is a significant step for mankind to proactively address climate change and maintain the global ecological environment. This paper analyses the impact of the BRI on the green development capacity of Chinese cities along the route using the difference-in-differences (DID) model. The results show that, first, the BRI can effectively improve the green development capacity of cities along China’s routes. Both the level of financial development of cities and regional fiscal revenues impact the green development index of cities. Second, the BRI has been more effective in enhancing green development capacity in the Maritime Silk Road region, in cities at lower administrative levels and in resource-based cities. Third, the BRI can enhance the green development capacity of cities by increasing regional revenues, the use of foreign investment and import and export trade.

Digital Silk Roads: Leveraging the Metaverse for Cultural Tourism within the Belt and Road Initiative Framework

The advent of the Metaverse, a convergence of virtual and physical realities, presents unprecedented opportunities for promoting cultural tourism along the historic Silk Roads within the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) framework. However, this emerging technology’s potential remains largely unexplored in the context of cultural heritage preservation and its promotion. The aim of this study is to address this gap by empirically examining how the Metaverse can be harnessed to improve tourists’ experiences, support sustainable tourism development, and promote cultural exchange along the Silk Roads. In this study, we employed a mixed-methods approach grounded in attribution theory, using both surveys and semi-structured interviews with Silk Road tourists who had been exposed to Metaverse applications. To investigate the relationships between Metaverse features, tourists’ attributions, satisfaction, and behavioral intentions, we used structural equation modeling and thematic analysis. The findings revealed that perceived immersion, avatar identification, and cultural authenticity significantly influenced tourists’ internal, stable, and controllable attributions. Interviews further highlighted the Metaverse’s potential to promote accessibility, interpretation, and engagement with Silk Road heritage, while also raising sociocultural and ethical considerations. This paper also showcases the development of Metaverse digital twin prototypes for several iconic Silk Road cities to demonstrate the potential for participatory virtual environments to promote cultural heritage preservation, accessibility, and sustainable tourism. The study’s findings contribute to the theoretical understanding of Metaverse tourism and the application of attribution theory, offering practical insight for the responsible and effective harnessing of this transformative technology. This research provides actionable recommendations for policymakers, destination managers, and technology providers to optimize the Metaverse’s potential for cultural tourism along the Silk Roads. This has great potential in promoting the BRI’s connectivity and cooperation objectives. This paper lays the foundation for future research and responsible innovation at the intersection of emerging technologies, cultural heritage, and sustainable tourism development.

The Correlation Between Asian Port Cities and Traditional Portuguese Urban Forms Based on Map and Machine Learning Analyses

In the 16th and 17th centuries, under the influence of the Portuguese Empire’s overseas expansion and cultural integration, the island city of Macau became an important international trading port in the Eastern Sea, with close ties to the Asian port cities governed by Portugal. This study introduces a new method for comparing urban morphological layouts using machine learning and investigates the potential benefits of combining urban morphological analysis with machine learning techniques. In addition, a combination of urban morphology theory and machine learning is used to excise samples of urban morphology from Portuguese urban geographical information maps. The morphological characteristics of port city areas are further extracted, and training labels for typical Portuguese urban textures are established. Using the YOLOv4 object detection algorithm, the results are compared with the urban textures of typical island and port cities of the Asian Silk Road—Goa in India, Malacca in Malaysia, Macau in China, and Dili in Timor-Leste—revealing the similarities and differences among the port cities in Asia influenced by traditional Portuguese urban practices. The results reveal the relationship between maritime trade and urban form.