• Strategy21
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• s.37
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• pp.104-143
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• 2015

China's new grand strategy, the "One Belt, One Road Initiative" (also Belt Road Initiative, or BRI) has two primary components: Chinese President Xi Jinping announced the "Silk Road Economic Belt" in September 2013 during a visit to Kazakhstan, and the "21^st Century Maritime Silk Route Economic Belt" in a speech to the Indonesian parliament the following month. The BRI is intended to supply China with energy and new markets, and also to integrate the countries of Central Asia, the Association of Southeast Asia Nations (ASEAN), and the Indian Ocean Region - though not Northeast Asia - into the "Chinese Dream". The project will be supported by the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), due to open in 2016 with 57 founding members from all around the world, and China has already promised US$ 50 billion in seed funding. China's vision includes networks of energy pipelines, railways, sea port facilities and logistics hubs; these will have obvious commercial benefits, but also huge geopolitical significance. China seems to have two distinct aims: externally, to restore its historical sphere of influence; and internally, to cope with income inequalities by creating middle-class jobs through enhanced trade and the broader development of its economy. In South Korea, opinion on the BRI is sharply polarized. Economic and industrial interests, including Korea Railroad Corporation (KORAIL), support South Korean involvement in the BRI and closer economic interactions with China. They see how the BRI fits nicely with President Park Geun-hye's Eurasia Initiative, and anticipate significant commercial benefits for South Korea from better connections to energy-rich Russia and the consumer markets of Europe and Central Asia. They welcome the prospect of reduced trade barriers between China and South Korea, and of improved transport infrastructure, and perceive the political risks as manageable. But some ardently pro-US pundits worry that the political risks of the BRI are too high. They cast doubt on the feasibility of implementing the BRI, and warn that although it has been portrayed primarily in economic terms, it actually reveals a crucial Chinese geopolitical strategy. They are fearful of China's growing regional dominance, and worried that the BRI is ultimately a means to supplant the prevailing US-led regional security structure and restore the Middle Kingdom order, with China as the only power that matters in the region. According to this view, once China has complete control of the regional logistics hubs and sea ports, this will severely limit the autonomy of China's neighbors, including South Korea, who will have to toe the Chinese line, both economically and politically, or risk their own peace and prosperity.

• Journal of Contemporary Eastern Asia
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.210-236
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• 2021

China's Belt and Road Initiative infrastructure connectivity and other projects are presented in much of the discourse as a grand strategy to trap developing nations in debt, to exert asymmetric power and construct a new world economic order. The asymmetric relationship between China and Myanmar might therefore be expected to generate a range of political risks for stakeholders. Myanmar itself presents a "perfect storm" of problems, with dysfunctional governance, civil conflict, under-development and growing economic dependence on China. The Kyaukphyu port project and associated Special Economic Zone in Myanmar's troubled Rakhine state is investigated as a case study of risks on the Belt and Road. While worst case fears China might seize military control of the port appear unlikely, at least in current conditions, empirical observation indicates the complexity on the ground generates an array of other risks - as well as opportunities, should conditions allow. Further, despite challenges and constrained capacity, Myanmar governments have demonstrated agency, including by re-negotiating control and costs of the Kyaukphyu project. The case underlines that conditions are more complicated than simply China's asymmetric power. A sceptical approach is taken to normative discourses in order to build inductive understanding of how stakeholders and local experts perceive dynamics underway. A political risk approach is deployed to develop a framework to identify, analyse and assess risks for actors in relation to the Kyaukphyu project. The research findings are presented on an interim basis, given current constraints on field interviews due to the current crisis.

• Maritime Security
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.1-35
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• 2023

The purpose of this study is to present the direction of development of our navy's response strategy through analysis at the ends, ways, and means level of the Chinese navy's offensive strategy for the West Sea. As a result of the analysis, at the ends level, the Chinese Navy's offensive strategy for the West Sea strategy is being linked to a grand strategy to protect maritime rights and achieve maritime power between the U.S. and China competition, at the ways level, the Chinese Navy is expected to create a foundation for the international community to recognize the West Sea as China's inland sea through "routine entry" and "exercise authority", and in case of emergency, it will try to secure sea control in the West Sea in a short period of time by blocking Korea's maritime transportation route based on the overwhelming preemptive attack capability of aircraft carriers. At the means level, it is accelerating the construction of aircraft carrier warfare units and improving its ability to engage long-range missiles. As a direction of development of the Korean Navy's response strategy in response to this, first, Establishment and Development of National Maritime Security Strategy in conjunction with the Korean Indo-Pacific Strategy. Second, it proposes the development of the concept of effective security operations for the east sea area of the West Sea intermediate line, and third, the development of the concept of combat performance and capacity building to strengthen survival and lethality.

• Korea Trade Review
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• v.41 no.3
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• pp.109-133
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• 2016

Major nations undergone grand national strategy regarding Eurasia such as China's One Belt and One Road Strategy and Korea's Eurasia Initiative owing to Eurasia's regional importance. Korea's Eurasia Initiative aims to make one continental, creative continental, peaceful continental with intra-Eurasian nations as grand national strategy is based on creative economy, undertaken by President Park's Government for the future of Eurasia after the Northeast Asian logistics hub strategy. Eurasia Initiative includes logistics network project as an important one which consists of Eurasia Friendly Express, Rajin-Hassan logistics project, the Arctic Ocean route project and Rail transport network project. The success of Eurasia Initiative depends on North Korea. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the improvement of prompt logistics network by networking main rail transport and other transports such as inland waterway transport and air transport by studying the current situation of Eurasia Express project, including rail transport network and the efficient methods of Eurasia logistics. The efficient methods of rail transport network under the Eurasia initiative are construction of multimodal logistics network connected with rail, international cooperation for logistics standardization in Eurasia, Eurasia nations' subscription of logistics-related conventions and projects performance based on these conventions, etc.

• Journal of Korea Port Economic Association
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.29-59
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• 2001

This paper aims to describe port competition in East Asia and the Korean government's port strategy. In doing so, the paper provides an overview of global changes in international trade, the shipping industry and the port business. It also delineates the status of port competition in the region. Particular examples are taken from the competition among the ports of Hong Kong, Singapore, and Malaysia, as well as those of Pusan and Kwangyang, Kaohsiung, Kobe, and Shanghai and Yantian. The port competition in East Asia is reviewed and classified in two groups: north-tier competition among traditional major players, such as Kobe and Pusan, and dark horses such as Shanghai, Kwangyang and perhaps Yokohama; and south-tier competition among the three traditionally big players Kaohsiung, Hong Kong and Singapore, and the relative newcomers of Yantian in China, and Tanjung Pelepas In Malaysia. Due to the enlarging of ships and expansion of port activities, the boundary between the two tier frontiers breakdown, or they may even merge, into one grand frontier, in the foreseeable future. Although it appears that Asian ports are not being very aggressive in preparing for the future of mega-carrier in their plans, it is true that China, Korea and Taiwan are moving full steam ahead in comprehensively developing their container ports on a large scale. It therefore seems to be the perfect time for rival ports to explore a port alliance strategy to fight against the trend toward alliances between of many shipping lines.

• Economic and Environmental Geology
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• v.53 no.1
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• pp.111-120
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• 2020

Remarkable scientific and technological achievements are mainly shown in the 'super-convergence' or 'convergence of convergence' among cross- disciplinary fields, and advanced countries are promoting the 'high-risk, high-return research' ecosystem. Google LLC is carrying out numerous new challenges in terms of a non-failure perspective. Innovative research by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has produced such breakthroughs as the Internet, GPS, semiconductors, the computer mouse, autonomous vehicles, and drones. China is pioneering a 'Moon Village' and planning the world's largest nuclear fusion energy and ultra-large particle accelerator project. Japan has also launched 'the moonshot technology development research system' to promote disruptive innovation. In Korea, the government is preparing a new research program to tackle the global scientific challenges. Therefore, it is necessary to determine the reasonable geoscientific challenges to be addressed and to conduct a preliminary study on these topics. For this purpose, it is necessary to conduct long-term creative research projects centered on young researchers, select outstanding principal investigators, extract innovative topics without prior research or reference, simplify research proposal procedures, innovate the selection solely based on key ideas, and evaluate results by collective intelligence in the form of conferences.