Super Continent: The Logic of Eurasian Integration, with Kent Calder

A Eurasian transformation is underway, and it flows from China. With a geopolitically central location, the country’s domestic and international policies are poised to change the face of global affairs. The Belt and Road Initiative has called attention to a deepening Eurasian continentalism that has, argues Kent Calder, much more significant implications than have yet been recognized. In Super Continent, Calder presents a theoretically guided and empirically grounded explanation for these changes. He shows that key inflection points, beginning with the Four Modernizations and the collapse of the Soviet Union; and culminating in China’s response to the Global Financial Crisis and Crimea’s annexation, are triggering tectonic shifts. Furthermore, understanding China’s emerging regional and global roles involves comprehending two ongoing transformations—within China and across Eurasia as a whole—and that the two are profoundly interrelated. Calder underlines that the geo-economic logic that prevailed across Eurasia before Columbus, and that made the Silk Road a central thoroughfare of world affairs for close to two millennia, is reasserting itself once again.

Discussant: Min YE (Associate Professor of International Relations, Boston University)

Moderator: William Grimes (Professor of International Relations and Political Science, Boston University)

This event is sponsored by the BU Center for the Study of Asia as part of the ongoing Pardee School of Global Studies cross-center initiative at Boston University, Assessing China’s Belt and Road Initiative, coordinated by Dr. Grant F. Rhode (BU Center for the Study of Asia)

Please RSVP to buasia@bu.edu to receive the Zoom link