Research consortium De:link//Re:link – Local Insights and New Knowledges bicc project: China’s New Silk Road Initiative in North Rhine-Westphalia and Pakistan

The Project is a sub-project of DE:LINK//RE:LINK: Local Perspectives on Transregional Processes of (Dis)Entanglement. The research network  De:link//Re:link: Local perspectives on transregional processes of entanglements and disentanglements  uses the example of the Belt and Road Initiative initiated by China in 2013 to investigate new spatial configurations and local perspectives on transregional infrastructure projects in Asia, Africa and Europe. The acronym  link  stands for  l ocal  i nsights and  n ew  k nowledges . The Project is part of the larger research network DE:LINK//RE:LINK: Local Perspectives on Transregional Processes of (Dis)Entanglement. The Belt and Road Initiative, initiated by China in 2013, serves as a case study for the network, which investigates new spatial configurations and local perspectives on transregional infrastructure projects in Asia, Africa and Europe. The acronym  link  stands for  l ocal  i nsights  and  n ew  k nowledges . The focus of the bicc project is on Germany and Pakistan, where the project team investigates the influence of Chinese presence around the inland port of Duisburg as the end point of the New Silk Road in Europe and along the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor. With a process perspective, a doctoral dissertation will generate knowledge on the following questions: How are local societies being influenced by the implementation of large-scale infrastructure projects? How do projects gain acceptance, and what change processes are induced by Chinese–local encounters? bicc is part of a larger consortium led by Humboldt-University Berlin. Other partners are the Centre for East European and International Studies and the Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient. The transdisciplinary cooperation aims to strengthen multi-directional knowledge exchanges between area studies research institutions and other knowledge actors in Germany as well as in the research project regions. For more details, visit the  project website