China’s Belt and Road Initiative: Economic Rationales

About the Seminar

Over the last six years, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has been met by both fanfare and criticism. While some countries have openly embraced the project, some have decided to clearly stay away, and others that may have initially joined the project are now viewing it more sceptically due to concerns over spiralling debt. With this background, the seminar will look at why China came up with such an ambitious project in the first place and what are China’s economic gains from the BRI. The speaker will look at Bangladesh and Southeast Asia to provide insights into the responses of BRI host states.

About the Speaker

Dr Sriparna Pathak is a Visiting Faculty at the Centre for Southeast Asian Studies, Gauhati University in Assam, India. Previously, she was a Consultant at the Policy Planning and Research Division at the Ministry of External Affairs where she provided policy inputs on India’s East and Southeast Asian neighbours.

Awarded a Doctorate degree from the Centre for East Asian Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University in 2015, she has also worked with the Observer Research Foundation, UNICEF India and the Centre for Armed Forces Historical Research. She has also been a journalist at the Indian Express and the Avenue Mail, Jharkhand respectively.

She was the a recipient of a joint scholarship awarded by the Ministry of Human Resources Development, India and the China Scholarship Council, Government of the People’s Republic of China. Besides English, Hindi, Bengali and Assamese, she is also fluent in Mandarin. Her areas of interest are China’s domestic economy, trade and economic relations between India and China and China’s foreign policy and economic linkages with the world.

Registration

For registration, please fill in this form and email to iseasevents3@iseas.edu.sg by 27 May 2019