I first encountered Bruno Maçães when he was interviewed by Tyler Cowen (Bruno Maçães on the Spirit of Adventure, Episode 50. Conversations with Tyler [September 2018]). With Maçães having recently completed a six-month overland journey across the Eurasian supercontinent while researching for his book, The Dawn of Eurasia (London: Penguin Random House UK, 2018), Cowen asked him to design a dream tour for someone with two or three weeks to spend in Eurasia. Maçães responded “the best would be fly to Kashgar in China…then cross the border into Pakistan, and perhaps go down all the way to Lahore and then Delhi,” in the process making “one of the classical trips, to go from China to India by land.” Hearing this, I was struck with the sense that Maçães was a thinker with a uniquely credible perspective worth paying attention to, having spent significant time on the ground in locations across Eurasia where China has a growing presence. Having undertaken the first part of the route described by Maçães myself during the summer of 2014, traveling south from Kashgar down the Karakoram Highway to the Khunjerab Pass (the border of China and Pakistan), my curiosity was piqued to begin a more systematic investigation of the role of China in the developing world. This serves as the entry point to my interest in Maçães’ Belt and Road: A Chinese World Order, the subject of this book review.
Source: Belt and Road: A Chinese World Order: The Independent Review: The Independent Institute