The Belt Road and Beyond: State-Mobilized Globalization in China, 1998-2018

Tune in to this superb analysis of the Belt and Road Initiative by Pardee School Associate Professor Min Ye!  Her recent research has focused on the historic precedents for the BRI within China, and the complex interplay of Chinese party, state, and local actors in implementing the BRI vision.  Her resulting book The Belt Road and Beyond: State-Mobilized Globalization in China, 1998-2018, documents her often surprising findings with a focus on Chinese domestic aspects of the BRI, in contrast to the many studies focusing on BRI’s international impacts.  In this interview, conducted by BUCSA associate Grant Rhode, Professor Ye discusses what she has found out through her research during the past six years, and also includes comments on the impact of the current COVID crisis and implications for the future of the BRI.

Min Ye is the author of The Belt, Road and Beyond: State-Mobilized Globalization in China 1998-2018 (Cambridge University Press 2020), Diasporas and Foreign Direct Investment in China and India (Cambridge University Press 2014), and the Making of Northeast Asia (with Kent Calder, Stanford University Press, 2020). Her articles, “Fragmentation and Mobilization: Domestic Politics of China’s Belt and Road”, “Competing Cooperation in Asia Pacific: TPP, RCEP, and the New Silk Road”, and “Conditions and Utility of Diffusion by Diasporas” have appeared in Journal of Contemporary China, Journal of Journal Asian Studies, and Journal of East Asian Studies.

Ye was the director of East Asian Studies program from 2010 to 2014 and launched the new major in Asian Studies at Boston University. She also served as a visiting scholar at Fudan University, Zhejiang University, and Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in China, as well as Rajiv Gandhi Foundation in India, Chinese University of Hong Kong, and the National University of Singapore. Ye has consulted Chinese state-owned companies and private companies on outbound investment. In addition, she served as the Pardee School Director of Undergraduate Studies from 2017 to 2019.

Ye has received grants and fellowships in the U.S and Asia, including a Smith Richardson Foundation grant (2016-2018), East Asia Peace, Prosperity, and Governance fellowship (2013), Princeton-Harvard China and the World Program postdoctoral fellowship (2009-2010), Millennium Education Scholarship in Japan (2006), and the Rosenberg Scholarship at Suffolk University (2020). In 2014-2016, the National Committee on the U.S-China Relations selects Min Ye as a Public Intellectual Program fellow.

Grant F. RHODE (e-mail: gfrhode@bu.edu) teaches and researches at the Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University and at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. He is Associate in Research at the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University and Faculty Affiliate of the China Maritime Studies

Institute of the U.S. Naval War College. He has been a Visiting Scholar in Taiwan at both National Chengchi University and National Taiwan University. He completed graduate work in Chinese studies at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge and holds MALD and PhD degrees in International Relations and Asian Diplomatic History from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University.

Dr. Rhode’s current research focuses on China’s role in historical and contemporary Eurasian maritime affairs. On the historical front, he is writing a book on Eurasian Maritime History for Global Strategists: Great Power Clashes along the Maritime Silk Road. On the contemporary front, Dr. Rhode helps lead Boston University’s conversations on China’s Belt and Road Initiative, including conferences at the Pardee School By Land and By Sea: China’s Belt and Road in Europe (2019) and Assessing China’s Signature Foreign Policy: the Expanding Belt and Road Initiative (2020).