China’s Reconnection to Europe via the BRI: The China-Europe Freight Train and Its Two-ended Urban and Regional Impacts
MERICS Lunch Talk with Professor Chen Xiangming, founding Director of the Center for Urban and Global Studies. Our topic:
China’s Reconnection to Europe via the BRI: The China-Europe Freight Train and Its Two-ended Urban and Regional Impacts
The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has forged a new spatio-economic connection between China and Europe. Since the first China-Europe freight train reached Duisburg in Germany in 2011 from the megacity of Chongqing in southwestern China, the number of trains and routes have multiplied into diverse and frequent services carrying containerized goods between a large number of regionally varied Chinese cities and major European urban centers. What kind of opportunities and challenges will the implementation of the China-Europe Freight Train (CEFT) face? What local impact will it have? Drawing from theoretical and analytical perspectives on global urbanization, regional development, and transit-oriented development (TOD), this talk will explore the role of the CEFT in creating new local hubs of international functions, spillovers in trade and logistics as well as in shaping new cross-border regional economic spaces for reorganized supply chains and more rebalanced development.
Chen Xiangming is Professor at Trinity College from 2007 to 2019 and currently Paul Raether Distinguished Professor of Global Urban Studies and Sociology at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. He is also an Adjunct Professor in the School of Social Development and Public Policy at Fudan University in Shanghai and the Graduate School of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences. He has published extensively on globalization, cities, and economic development and has conducted policy research for UNCTAD, the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and OECD.
Dr. Thomas Eder, acting head of program International Relations at MERICS, will moderate the discussion.
Date: Wednesday, October 23rd, 2019, 12:00 to 2 p.m. (The event will start at 12:30, a light lunch will be served)
Location: Mercator Institute for China Studies, Klosterstraße 64, 10179 Berlin-Mitte