Regional Connection under the Belt and Road Initiative The Prospects for Economic and Financial Cooperation

China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is intended to radically increase investment and integration along a series of land and maritime routes. As the initiative involves more than 100 countries or international organizations and huge amounts of infrastructure construction, cooperation between many different markets is essential to its success. Cheung and Hong have edited a collection of essays that, between them, examine a range of practical issues facing the BRI and how those issues are being addressed in a range of countries. Such challenges include managing financing and investment, ensuring infrastructure connectivity, and handling the necessary e-commerce and physical logistics. Emphasizing the role of Hong Kong as an intermediary and enabler in the process, this book attempts to tackle the key practical challenges facing the BRI and anticipate how these challenges will affect the initiative’s further development. The book provides a holistic and international approach to understanding the implementation of the BRI and its implications for the future economic integration of this huge region. Chapter 5 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 3.0 license. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tandfbis/rt-files/docs/Open+Access+Chapters/9780429467172_oachapter5.pdf

Preface Part 1: Retrospect and Evaluation1. Silk Roads and the Centrality of Old World Eurasia (Gungwu Wang)2. Progress on the Belt and Road Initiative: A Four-Year Evaluation (Wen Wang, Jinjing Jia, Junyong Xiang, Ying Liu) Part 2: Finance and Investment3. Hong Kong as an Equity Financing Centre for the Belt and Road Nations (Kevin C. K. Lam, Heather M.F. Lee, Julia J. Liu and Stacy Z. Wang)4. A Comparison of Investment Strategies of China and Japan in Infrastructure Projects in ASEAN (Cheung-kwok Law and Derek Yuen) Part 3: Infrastructure Connectivity5. China’s Belt and Road Initiative through the Lens of Central Asia (Roman Vakulchuk and Indra Overland)6. The Belt and Road Initiative and Cambodia’s Infrastructure Connectivity Development: A Cambodian Perspective (Lak Chansok)7. Economic Cooperation and Infrastructure Linkage between Malaysia and China under the Belt and Road Initiative (Chow-bing Ngeow) Part 4: E-commerce and Logistics8. E-commerce Readiness from Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to the Belt and Road Initiative (Kam-fai Wong, Chun-hung Cheng, and Waiman Cheung)9. Maritime Logistics: Challenges and Opportunities in Asia Pacific Region in the Perspective of Belt and Road Initiative (Jai Acharya) Part 5: Prospect and Challenges10. Plotting the Future of the Belt and Road Initiative: Connections, Opportunities and Challenges (Peter Frankopan) Index

Fanny M. Cheung is Pro-Vice Chancellor of the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), Co-Director of Hong Kong Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies, CUHK, HongKongand Co-Convenor of the Global China Research Programme, CUHK, Hong Kong Ying-yi Hong is Associate Director of Hong Kong Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies, CUHK, Hong Kongand Co-Convenor of the Global China Research Programme, CUHK, Hong Kong.