Global Economic Observer, 2019

that are subject to The "16+1" Platform under China's Belt and Road Initiative, including Romania, are member states of the European Union (EU) and their economic development strategies are implicitly dependent on the European Union's goals, financing mechanisms and regulations. On the other hand, the CEEC's geographical position, bridging Asia and Western Europe and their economic potential in the global value and production chain make them indispensable for BRI integration within Eurasia. Furthermore, in a more and more restrictive European context, due to Brexit and the refugee crisis, meeting the financing needs for development and economic growth is crucial for this group of countries in order to ensure their real convergence with the more developed West. In such a context, the present paper aims at bringing a contribution to the following pressing question for Brussels, in terms of geopolitical and economic concerns, namely, whether BRI can become a complementary support instrument to the European policies fostering CEEC's integration with the West and not a competitive strategy hindering EU's interests. To this aim, we try to investigate some of the features of specific cases of similar infrastructure investments in CEEC, financed by European funds and within the BRI framework, respectively, in order to have a base for a comparative analysis.

Commonwealth Trade Hot Topics, 2017

China's multibillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is a common fixture on the radar of policymakers and researchers because of the massive financial investment it involves and the economic opportunities it provides disadvantaged Eurasian states. BRI promises fast-track infrastructural development, transnational connectivity, and unimpeded trade. It predicates economic growth in developing countries on the shared development model. However, BRI has also engendered sensitive economic and security challenges. The Islamic world embraces BRI even as China's engagement there poses critical challenges to its foreign policy. This chapter highlights key markers on the landscape of BRI projects in the Islamic world and presents their implications for China's foreign policy. It also provides useful policy guidelines for a more effective implementation of BRI-related projects, thereby protecting China from possible conflict with regional and global powers.

Časopis Pomorskog fakulteta Kotor - Journal of Maritime Sciences, 2022

Belt and road initiative delivers an idea for Global Energy Interconnection (GEI) as globally interconnected strong and smart grid based on Ultra-High Voltage (UHV). Global Energy Interconnection is an infrastructure platform that can be used for clean energy production, transition and consumption worldwide. GEI facilitate efforts to meet global power demand with clean and green alternatives as low carbon energy. GEI is promoting integration of energy, information and transportation networks, enlarging global power trade, ensuring universal electricity service. GEI optimizes resource allocation and utilization by converting various energy sources including coal, oil, hydro, wind and solar into electricity and transmitting over long distance. It can achieve mutual support and free trade of clean energy from different regions, and maximize energy efficiency and economy by taking advantages of time-zone, seasonal and price difference. Actually, Global Energy Interconnection is a system that consist of "Smart Grid", "UHV Grid" and "Clean Energy". Smart Grid integrates modern smart technologies with respect to advanced power transmission, smart control, new energy integration and new energy storage. UHV Grid is mainly composed of 1000 kV (and above) AC and +-800 kV (and above) DC transmission lines, featuring long transmission distance, large capacity, high efficiency, low line loss, less land use and high security. The shaping up of GEI can be divided into three phase: domestic, intra-continental and intercontinental interconnection. UHV Grid result is visible in already tested in practice transmission lines of DC and AC voltage. Over 20 UHV networks have been built in China. There is one network longer than 2000 km in Brazil, and two networks of UHV in India.

Journal of Legal, Ethical and Regulatory Issues, 2021

The Belt and Road Initiative is a revival of the centuries-old Silk Road, which has been in use for over two thousand years. China has designed BRI as a new strategic framework for its foreign policy and economic ambitions, concentrating directly on the neighboring countries along its southern and western borders. China aims to foster cooperation at the regional levels through BRI by leveraging the enormous financial and economic potentialities of China. The primary objective of China with respect to the BRI is to "divert Beijing's strategic attention and resources toward engagement with countries on China's western flank, including Central Asia, West Asia, South Asia, and beyond," while avoiding direct and high-intensity conflict with other major Asia-Pacific powers. BRI addresses China's long-standing post-Cold War Aussenpolitik anxieties, primarily, mitigating the potentially negative geopolitical implications of hegemony by the US and establishing a credible deterrence concerning global political order led by the US, as well as to present Beijing as a substitute leader in world' economic affairs. With the execution of BRI to the extent that it fosters peace and harmony, a multi-polar world will emerge and that it is associated to nurture mutual relationships based on win-win cooperation and reciprocal benefits.

International Journal of Digital Earth, 2018

The Belt and Road initiative has a significant focus on infrastructure, trade, and economic development across a vast region, and it also provides significant opportunities for sustainable development. The combined pressure of climate variability, intensified use of resources, and the fragility of ecosystems make it very challenging, however, to achieve future sustainability. To develop the path in a sustainable way, it is important to have a comprehensive understanding of these issues across nations and evaluate them in a scientific and well-informed approach. In this context, the Digital Belt and Road (DBAR) program was initiated as an international venture to share expertise, knowledge, technologies, and data to demonstrate the role of Earth observation science and technology and big Earth data applications to support large-scale development. In this paper, we identify pressing challenges, present the research priorities and foci of the DBAR program, and propose solutions where big Earth data can make significant contributions. This paper calls for further joint actions and collaboration to build a digital silk road in support of sustainable development at national, regional and global levels.

2006

This paper analyses the development and current status of China's Transportation System in detail, including the main aspects such as transportation infrastructure, equipment, transport management structure etc. Meanwhile, it also points out some crucial problems and challenges facing Chinese transportation development, including Investment of transportation infrastructure construction and maintenance, construction of integrated transport system, Costs of Transportation and transportation technical capacity building issues.

Journal of Economics and Sustainable Development, 2015

Given the importance of transportation in the commercial life, industry and the overall economic development of a nation, this paper attempts to evaluate the impact of developments in transportation on Nigeria's national development. It addresses five key areas in its discussion of transportation and national development. First, it tries to conceptualize transportation and national development. Second, it tries to provide a historical brief of the role of transportation in the evolution of the Nigerian nation. Third, it discusses the developments in the different modes of transportation from the colonial period to date. Fourth, it tries to examine the impact of transportation on Nigeria's national development from three perspectives viz: economic, social and political. It observes that apart from lumping transportation and communication together in the budgetary allocation of resources, what is allocated to the sector is inadequate, given the crucial role of transportation in the modern economy. Finally, it suggests the separation of transportation from communication in the budgetary allocation of resources, increase in the allocation to the former, prompt release of the actual budgeted funds, and proper utilization of the approved and released funds to implement the designed transportation facilities if it is to contribute its quota to over attainment of national development.

Comparative Public Administration, 2024

Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association, 2021

as part of the twenty-sixth anniversary of Sultan Abdülhamid II's accession to the Ottoman throne, a series of opening ceremonies were held to inaugurate a set of new public fountains for the recentlycompleted Hamidiye waterline in Istanbul. The day began with the most monumental of the series, built in the Tophane neighbourhood not far from a larger, eighteenth-century public fountain that had long shaped the district's social life. As the Ottoman Turkish and French-language press reported, the ceremony was attended by a crowd of municipal and palace officials, chemists, ulema, representatives from European industries, and students from a nearby s c h ool (Fig. ). 1 Abdurrahman Nurettin Pasha, the overseer of the project, spoke on the hygienic benefits of the fountain's scientifically-tested water, and after prayers and the ceremonial sacrifice of a sheep, he collected some of the fountain's water in a specially-made crystal carafe, before travelling to five other new Hamidiye fountains around the city and presenting each of their waters to the Sultan himself. 2 W h i le this new Tophane fountain was designed by the Italian architect Raimondo d'Aronco, using a mixture of marble and metal work in an art nouveau and rococo style, a complementary array of smaller mass-produced fountains, drafted by the military engineer André Berthier and produced by the Val d'Osne foundry in Paris, were also placed throughout the city (Fig. and). 3

Technology in Society, 1992

Physical infrastructure --pipelines, roads, treatment plants, and a variety of other facilities --provides services essential to virtually all economic and social activity. The facilities of infrastructure are long lived, and evolving technologies offer enhanced performance for aging systems. At the same time, new discoveries in electronics, biotechnology, materials sciences, and other fields offer radically different and potentially valuable ways of providing infrastructure services. Substantial opportunities exist for improving the various functional modes of infrastructure. Also, common problems and opportunities among these modes make infrastructure, taken as a whole, a meaningful target for research and development of new technologies. However, substantial institutional and economic barriers to infrastructure innovation must be lowered if the potentials of newer technologies are to be realized. International cooperation is a means to lowering these barriers. As an initial step toward broad international cooperation, Japan and the United States could undertake a program of joint research and demonstration of technologies to serve domestic and international markets. Working together, these two leading industrial nations can achieve more than they can separately, for themselves and for all the world's people.