• Korea Trade Review
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• v.45 no.3
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• pp.35-54
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• 2020

China's 'One Belt One Road' initiative has had a profound impact on China's relationship with Central Asia, which shares borders at North-western region. Central Asia plays an important role in securing the export market of Chinese products, supply of raw materials, and transportation route to Europe. The inland port is of significance to facilitate the development of logistics, trade and industry in the surrounding areas by enabling the distribution and import and export clearance in the region by performing the role of the seaport on the hinterland. The purpose of this study is to analyze the effect of the development of inland ports in central and western China on the geopolitical relationship between China and Central Asia. To this end, we analyze the status of inland port development in China's Midwest by employing the SWOT-PEST analysis method to analyze the current status as well as prospects of trade, investment and transportation routes with Central Asia in terms of geopolitics. As a result of the analysis, the relations between China and Central Asian Countries are becoming more politically and economically close, but it has brought about serious challenges by domestic and foreign environmental changes. Therefore, the development of the inland ports in central and western China are determined by the geopolitical relations under 'One Belt One Road' initiative between China and Central Asia, while the development of the inland port is also expected to serve as a catalyst for the development of both regions.

• Acta Via Serica
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.51-67
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• 2016

This article examines the nature of geopolitics and its impact on the international political economy of Eurasia/Silk Road. The research questions are exploratory and aim at revealing the differing geopolitical perceptions of the Russian Federation, the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the former Soviet Central Asian countries-Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan-within the context of an emerging "New Silk Road". Consequently, the main goal of this article is to contribute to a better understanding of what factors constrain and shape Silk Road initiatives in Eurasia. To this end, the article focuses on geopolitics and regional integration theories through a consideration of the Silk Road initiatives of a number of Eurasian countries.

• Acta Via Serica
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.1-22
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• 2020

The paper discusses how the new EU Strategy towards Central Asia issued in May 2019 might be analyzed through the lens of the intensely debated transformations from the liberal to a post-liberal international order. The author claims that the EU's normative power is transforming from the post-Cold War predominantly liberal/ value-based approach, with democracy and human rights at its core, to a set of more technical tools and principles of good governance and effective management of public administration. The paper problematizes a nexus between the dynamics of the EU's nascent post-liberalism and the geopolitical challenges of the EU's growing engagement with illiberal regimes, focuses on direct encounters between the post-liberal EU and the illiberal elites in Central Asia, and seeks to find out the impact of these connections upon the EU's international subjectivity. In this context geopolitical dimensions of EU foreign and security policies, along with the specificity of the EU's geopolitical actorship in Central Asia, are discussed.