China’s Maritime Silk Road

This innovative book examines the maritime component of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), focusing on three key trade routes and addressing the question of how China protects its overseas assets.

Gerald Chan explores China’s rising maritime power, using geo-developmentalism as a theoretical framework to analyse the country’s development of port facilities and infrastructure along important trade routes. Through developing these sea routes, he argues that a new global order is in the making. The book also offers an in-depth and balanced review of two major criticisms of China’s BRI: the first being so-called ‘debt trap diplomacy’, and the second being security concerns surrounding China’s IT industry, the resolution of which Chan suggests will pave the way towards developing a ‘digital Silk Road’.

Following on from Chan's previous work on high-speed rail and other land networks, this book offers a comprehensive and up-to-date account on infrastructure building in this context. It will prove a stimulating read for scholars and students of Chinese foreign policy and international relations, as well as policy makers, government officials and businesses seeking to better understand China’s foreign trade and development policies.