Infrastructures of Logistics
Massive investments in ports, highways, railway connections and submarine cables will not only bring to life China’s dream of a new Silk Road, but also lay the infrastructural groundwork for an interregional integration of the Eurasian continent and beyond. While material and financial aspects of this integration process have reached an impressive magnitude and are in the focus of media attention, this subproject examines a less noticed aspect: the Chinese influence on ideas of space and on spatial planning procedures in selected countries, which may dictate the long-term territorial transformation potential of such infrastructures of logistics. What specific concepts and spatial practices such as “corridorization” are emerging? Is there a transfer of alternative forms of territorial and regulatory statecraft derived from China’s modernity? How does China’s participation in the planning and construction of gigantic infrastructures and new urban centers worldwide shape the spatial dimensions of a newly emerging political order on the one hand, and novel capitalist constellations of connectivity on the other?
Lead
Team
Former Employees
Media
Publications

China’s Bifurcated Space Diplomacy and Institutional Density
Maximilian Mayer & Kunhan Li
The Hague Journal of Diplomacy 18 (2023), 1-29

China’s Engagement in Africa: Activities, Effects and Trends
Maximilian Mayer, Xuewu Gu et al.
Global Focus, Center for Global Studies, 2022

Theorizing China-world integration: sociospatial reconfigurations and the modern silk roads
Maximilian Mayer and Xin Zhang
Review of International Political Economy, 28 (4), 974-1003, 2021

Belt and Road Cities begin to find their form
Maximilian Mayer and Simon Curtis
CIDOB Opinion, No. 630, Barcelona Centre for International Affairs, 2020

Rethinking the Silk Road. China’s Belt and Road Initiative and Emerging Eurasian Relations
Maximilian Mayer (Ed.)
Springer Singapore 2018