China's Belt and Road (BRI)

In this paper, we attempt to analyze the China-Russia cooperation within the context of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). For this end, the prospects for and challenges toward the alignment of the two countries' Eurasia strategies and the impact of such cooperation on the economics, politics, and security of the region and beyond are examined. Exploring the two nations' actual and potential points of convergence and divergence, we maintain that China-Russia strategic partnership stands at the center of the BRI's expansion in Eurasia. Economically, the cooperation aims to boost development in the region by spurring infrastructure, connectivity, and innovation. Politically, it seeks to create a more institutionalized and harmonious regional existence via an economy-driven approach to security to address such threats as extremism, separatism, and terrorism. Therefore, in the long run, we argue that the China-Russia cooperation on the BRI is poised to remake the Eurasian geoeconomic and geopolitical landscape with major implications for regional and global politics.

This paper analyses the semiotics of the Easter Sunday suicide attacks on churches and luxury sea -front hotels in Sri Lanka and the Weaponization of religion in this multi-faith and multicultural island.  As there is no history or motive for local Muslims to attack Christians since both these religious communities are minorities in Buddhist-majority Sri Lanka, and given the economic targets of the crime,  it is clear that external parties  and networks are promoting ethno-religious divisions in the strategically located island in order to covertly further their security agendas, as well as, a  Cold War in the Indian Ocean against China and the rise of Asia. The narrative of Christian–Muslim conflict is a Euro–American one that does not mesh with local history and does not have traction in Sri Lanka, but may provide clues to the external parties that staged the highly sophisticated logistics operation of simultaneous bombings in disparate locations.

the BRI is not high enough. There are positive and negative evaluations. The positive evaluation is mainly related to the importance of BRI with regard to Turkey's economy, business, infrastructure construction and the national rejuvenation, while the negative side is about China's aim, cultural security and the disputes between the two countries. To deal with such cognitive differences, China needs to boost the publicity of the initiative and form a better understanding about Turkish domestic needs. China and Turkey should also seek to strengthen people-to-people ties.

Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) by China has emerged as one of the most important factors in the upcoming global politics. This plan can impact both regional and global politics. There are multidimensional and multifaceted repercussions of BRI for the international global politics. This paper describes the details of BRI, the micro-plans which are being planned under this program. Then, it enlists the economic and international politics benefits which China would gain from this plan. After that, this paper enumerates the possible benefits of BRI for the regional countries like Pakistan. In addition to that, this paper also highlights the possible global and regional challenges which China might face while completing and getting benefits out of this plan. After conducting a critical analysis of BRI's trajectory, its possible global and regional repercussions for the emerging international politics, its benefits for China and the possible challenges this paper concludes that no matter how beneficial this plan can be for Chinese global economic position there are multiple challenges which China will have to tackle with. Otherwise, BRI can lose its potential economic and global benefits both in the region and in the larger world politics.

Assessing Securitization: China’s Belt and Road Initiative
                                Katja Banik and Jan Lüdert

Napoleon warned: “Let China sleep; when she awakes, she will shake the world”. As China awakens, the world around it is rumbling with the rise of national populism in the West and elsewhere. Donald Trump’s “America first” policy and Chinese President Xi Jinping’s announcement of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), designed to revitalize the Silk Road, demonstrate an ostensible shift. World politics is experiencing a decisive historical moment. This has become evident with a number of factors: a growing cult of personality surrounding the Chinese President, China’s introduction of a Social Credit System (SCS) and, in the West, a confidence crisis in democratic institutions sweeping through the European Union (EU) – especially ‘Brexit’, as the United Kingdom’s move to leave the EU. These exist amongst parallel developments across the Atlantic with Donald Trump’s  Presidential administration in the United States (US).