Mackinder Forum Virtual Seminar #14:"A Giraffe in Nanjing: A Cartographic Reimagining of China’s One Belt One Road"

On Sunday, September 6, 2020 (from 1:00 PM to 2:30 PM Eastern Time, US), an anonymous presenter delivered a talk on "A Giraffe in Nanjing: A Cartographic Reimagining of China’s One Belt One Road."

ABSTRACT: Many myths surround China’s Belt and Road Initiative. The results of a spatial analysis of the American Enterprise Institute’s Chinese Global Investment Tracker, billed as the most complete public record of China’s investment and construction worldwide with more than 3,700 transactions recorded from January 2005 through June 2020, may surprise you as less overwhelming than you were led to believe. However, when we frame the Chinese Communist Party’s foreign investments in the Belt and Road Initiative in the geographic and historic perspective that Sir Halford Mackinder wrote about with such apprehension, something much more troubling emerges. We will explore all the above in a series of maps.

READING: Phillips, Andrew and J.C. Sharman, "When Companies Wielded the Power of States," Wall Street Journal, July 9, 2020: https://www.wsj.com/articles/when-companies-wielded-the-power-of-states-11594304429.