Regional Connection under the Belt and Road Initiative: The Prospects for Economic and Financial Cooperation

Silk roads and the centrality of Old World Eurasia / Gungwu Wang -- Progress on the Belt and Road Initiative: a four-year-evaluation / Wen Wang, Jinjing Jia, Junyong Xiang, and Ying Liu -- Hong Kong as an equity financing centre for the Belt and Road nations / Kevin C.K. Lam, Heather M.F. Lee, Julia J. Liu, and Stacy Z. Wang -- A comparison of investment strategies of China and Japan and infrastructure projects in ASEAN / Cheung-Kwok Law and Derek Yuen -- China's Belt and Road Initiative through the lens of Central Asia / Roman Vakulchuk and Indra Overland -- The Belt and Road Initiative and Cambodia's infrastructure connectivity development: a Cambodian perspective / Lak Chansok -- Economic cooperation and infrastructure linkage between Malaysia and China under the Belt and Road Initiative / Chow-Bing Ngeow -- e-Commerce readiness from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to the Belt and Road Initiative / Kam-Fai Wong, Chun-Hung Cheng, and Waiman Cheung -- Maritime logistics: challenges and opportunities in Asia Pacific region in the perspective of the Belt and Road Initiative / Jai Acharya -- Plotting the future of the Belt and Road Initiative: connections, opportunities, and challenges / Peter Frankopan.

China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is intended to radically increase investment and integration along a series of land and maritime routes. As the initiative involves more than 100 countries or international organizations and huge amounts of infrastructure construction, cooperation between many different markets is essential to its success. Cheung and Hong have edited a collection of essays that, between them, examine a range of practical issues facing the BRI and how those issues are being addressed in a range of countries. Such challenges include managing financing and investment, ensuring infrastructure connectivity, and handling the necessary e-commerce and physical logistics. Emphasizing the role of Hong Kong as an intermediary and enabler in the process, this book attempts to tackle the key practical challenges facing the BRI and anticipate how these challenges will affect the initiative's further development. The book provides a holistic and international approach to understanding the implementation of the BRI and its implications for the future economic integration of this huge region.