Eurasia’s Geopolitics

Eurasia’s contemporary geopolitics is addressed through the prism of the People’s Republic of China’s investment in the supercontinent’s supply chains. These logistics investments on land and at sea through China’s Belt and Road Initiative have underpinned the country’s economic and political transformation as the Eurasian pacemaker. Attention is focused initially upon the policy’s domestic antecedents before tracking investments in international transport developments within the Silk Road Economic Belt’s three transcontinental economic corridors and in the three shorter economic corridors designed to integrate Southeast Asia and South Asia more closely into China’s Eurasian economic and political landscape. Then the Twenty-First Century Maritime Silk Road is explored through an examination of investments by China’s state-owned enterprises in a string of ports on Eurasia’s southern fringe before examining developments in the Arctic that have completed the country’s circumnavigation of the island supercontinent. The contemporary geopolitical repercussions stemming from China’s enhanced economic connectivity through its Belt and Road Initiative have affected countries and regions in markedly different ways. These consequences are illustrated by reference to India, Iran, Japan, Russia, Turkey, the United Kingdom, the United States and Central Asia, the Eurasian Economic Union, the European Union, the Middle East, South Asia, and Southeast Asia.