The Material Geographies of the Belt and Road Initiative: Infrastructures and Political Ecologies on the New Silk Road

by Ratchada Arpornsilp (Contribution by), Orlando Woods (Contribution by), Caixia Mao (Contribution by), Patrick Bond (Contribution by), Simone Veglio (Contribution by)

Overview

China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), commonly called the New Silk Road, is a huge infrastructure project currently revitalising or creating new trading routes and large developments across the globe. It is estimated to cost up to US$8 trillion and impact more than 65% of the world’s population.

This book explores the unequal ways this controversial project is altering livelihoods, places and the environment. From road building projects in Nairobi to grassroots environmental activism in Thailand, researchers from the Global North and South analyse the real-world impacts of this unprecedented project, bringing together critical geography and political ecology approaches.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781529240634
Publisher:	Bristol University Press
Publication date:	10/28/2025
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x (d)

About the Author

Elia Apostolopoulou is Associate Professor at Imperial College London.

Han Cheng is Visiting Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science.

Jonathan Silver is Deputy Director and Senior Research Fellow at the University of Sheffield.

Alan Wiig is Associate Professor at the University of Florida.

Table of Contents

Introduction: The World Transformed: Grounding the Belt and Road Initiative - Elia Apostolopoulou, Han Cheng, Jonathan Silver and Alan Wiig

1. The Contested Coal-Fired Power in the Belt and Road Initiative: Indonesia as a Case Study - Bowen Gu

2. Dynamics of Grassroots Collectivism in Thailand’s Special Economic Zones: Cases of Natural Resource Conflicts Within the Belt and Road Initiative - Ratchada Arpornsilp

3. Railways of Hope, Railways of Conflicts: Governance of the Domestic Environmental Impacts of a Belt and Road Project - Xiaofeng Liu

4. A Debt to Whom? The Nature Questions in Sino-Sri Lankan Development Narratives - Orlando Woods, Kanchana Ruwanpura, Loritta Chan and Barnabas Mah

5. Waiting, Acceleration, Stabilisation: Polychronic Temporalities as Drivers of a Large-Scale Chinese Green Technology Project in Thuringia, Eastern Germany - Hannes Langguth

6. Silk Road on Ice: Extractivism, Climate Change, and Resistances - Ksenija Hanaček

7. Donor Competition, Local Agency, and Contingency: Jakarta-Bandung High-Speed Railway in Indonesia - Caixia Mao

8. A Postcolonial Belt and Road Initiative? Dependency, Development, and Geopolitics in China-Latin America Relations - Simone Vegliò

9. The Elusive Rainbow at the End of the Belt and Road: Chinese Investment, Finance and Trade Controversies in Southern Africa - Patrick Bond

10. Beyond the Logistical Monolith: Multiplicity and Differentiation Along the Adriatic Corridor - Francesca Governa, Leonardo Ramondetti, Astrid Safina, Angelo Sampieri and Alberto Valz Gris

11. Capitalizing on the Logistical Future: Discounting Uncertainty in the Georgian Belt and Road Initiative - Evelina Gambino

12. Infrastructure-Led Development, Urban Transformation, and Inequality in China’s Belt and Road Initiative: A Marxist Postcolonial Geographies Analysis - Elia Apostolopoulou

Afterword: The Material Futures of the Belt and Road Initiative - Elia Apostolopoulou, Han Cheng, Jonathan Silver and Alan Wiig

Editorial Reviews

'Bringing together interdisciplinary perspectives, this timely collection reveals how Belt and Road Initiative projects transform ecologies, territories, and power relations—essential reading for scholars and practitioners of infrastructure, development, human geography and political ecology.' Seth Schindler, University of Manchester

'This is an intensely geographical book, in all of the best ways. Grounded in specific places, it examines the many different ways in which the multiscalar project of the Belt and Road Initiative touches down, and is shaped and reshaped in practice. It is essential reading for anyone trying to understand the realities of the Belt and Road Initiative.' Emma Mawdsley, University of Cambridge

'Traversing infrastructural forms, this book offers a distinctly global, yet grounded, analysis of the material and contested transformations of the Belt and Road Initiative as it produces uneven geographies and restructures economies and geopolitics from the ground up.' Sophie Webber, The University of Sydney

From the Publisher