China’s Maritime Silk Road and Asia

The 21st Century Maritime Silk Road (MSR) can be considered as the most significant strategic outreach by China. It stretches across the large oceanic geography comprising the Western Pacific, the Indian Ocean, the Mediterranean and the North-Western Atlantic. The initiative, founded on historic recall, aims to build a flourishing multi-sectoral maritime economic network across the entire region with land corridors connecting to the terrestrial Silk Road Economic Belt (SREB). It is premised on monetary integration, infrastructure development, connectivity and, people-to-people contacts. It is also an accepted fact that such a vast enterprise would have politics and security as attendant factors. This book examines the broader strategic threads that are at play in this grand and ambitious trans-regional initiative unveiled by China.

Dr Vijay Sakhuja is Director, National Maritime Foundation (NMF). He is also a visiting Senior Fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS), Singapore and before joining NMF, he was Director (Research) at the Indian Council of World Affairs (ICWA), New Delhi.
Ms Jane Chan is a Research Fellow and Coordinator of the Maritime Security Programme at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) at the Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore. Her main research interests include maritime security issues in Southeast Asia, law and order at sea, regional maritime cooperation and confidence-building measures.

Foreword, Abbreviations, Introduction; 1. Geopolitics of China's ‘Maritime Silk Road' Concept: An Indian Perspective, 2. China's ‘One Belt, One Road' Initiative: The Convergence of Strategic Interests and Domestic Imperatives, 3. Security Dimension of China's 21st Century Maritime Silk Road : Indian Ocean Context, 4. Southeast Asian Responses to China's 21st Century Maritime Silk Road Initiative, 5. The 21st Century Maritime Silk Road: The Beijing Consensus Revisited from a South Asian Perspective, 6. China's Africa Push for Maritime Silk Road,7. The Idea of a Maritime Silk Road: History of an Idea, 8. Revisiting Maritime Past: Maritime Silk Road and Project Mausam, Index.