Abstract: Through its first full decade, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), launched by China in 2013, has reshaped much of the discourse and reality of global geopolitics. The BRI's impact in geoeconomic terms, especially at the regional level and across localities, remains understudied. In this article, drawing from scholarships on economic statecraft, infrastructure development, and policy mobility as three conceptual pillars, I offer a combined analysis of a tripartite or three-part case featuring: 1) the logistics/trade complex in Djibouti, 2) industrial park-based manufacturing in Ethiopia, and 3) the Addis Ababa-Djibouti Railway (ADR) linking Djibouti and Ethiopia into a cross-border economic corridor, with a multifaceted focus on the compositional features of these embedded and connective infrastructural projects, their spatial and socioeconomic consequences for local, regional, and national development, and broader analytical implications.
Xiangming Chen (Thu,) studied this question.