Seeing China's Belt and Road

Edward Schatz is Professor of Political Science and the Director of the Centre for European and Eurasian Studies at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, University of Toronto. He is the author of Slow Anti-Americanism: Social Movements and Symbolic Politics in Central Asia (2021), Modern Clan Politics (2004), as well as the editor of Paradox of Power: The Logics of State Weakness in Eurasia (2017) and Political Ethnography: What Immersion Contributes to the Study of Power (2009). Rachel Silvey is Professor of Geography and Planning and Director of the Asian Institute, Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, University of Toronto. Her work has been published in the fields of migration studies, cultural and political geography, gender studies, and critical development studies. Her research has focused on migration, gender, and development in Indonesia, as well as Southeast Asian migration to the Gulf States and North America. She iscurrently researching labor migration associated with BRI projects in South East Asia, as well as the migration regimes associated with the expansion of plantations in South East Asia.

• Introduction: Seeing the BRIEdward Schatz and Rachel Silvey Part 1: Seeing China's Infrastructural Power 1. Securing the Belt and Road and Establishing Hierarchy in Central AsiaEdward Lemon and Bradley Jardine2. Official Lending, Optics, and Outliers: Chinese Debt and the Belt and Road Initiative after COVID-19Tom Narins3. Conceptualizing the BRI: Complex Bilateralism in Theory and PracticeJeremy Paltiel and Karl Yan Part 2: Seeing Exhibits, Maps, and Corridors4. China and the Visual Politics of World OrderMarina Kaneti 5. The Power of Blank Spaces: A Critical Cartography of China's Belt and Road Initiative in the Himalaya RegionGalen Murton6. Behind the Spectacle of the Belt and Road Initiative: Corridor Perspectives, Visibility, and a Politics of SightJessica DiCarlo Part 3: Seeing Connectivity, Privacy, and Labor7. Prefiguring China's Digital Silk Road to Europe: Connecting SwitzerlandLena Kaufmann8. Keeping Watch along the Digital Silk Road: CCTV Surveillance and Central Asians' Right to Privacy Jasmin Dall'Agnola9. Labor Migration Pathways under the BRI: A Case Study of Chinese Expatriates in EthiopiaDing Fei Conclusion: Looking DownstreamEdward Schatz and Rachel Silvey

Seeing China's Belt and Road is a highly original take on China's elusive global infrastructure project. Through the visions of BRI participants, from Chinese workers in Ethiopia to recipients of Chinese technology in Central Asia, this book illuminates the dynamism and unevenness of this grand initiative, as it continues to shape the world, often in invisible ways.