Ten years after its launch in 2013, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has emerged as “the largest infrastructure and development project in human history”. Despite a range of policy makers and researchers debunking Belt and Road Initiative activities as “debt-trapping”, Western and allied groups have continually stoked fears and misunderstandings of what the BRI is and the role it is playing in the world.In this issue of Dongsheng Explains, we look at the BRI, its historical development, the implications for the countries involved, and the debt-trap narratives.

Slums were not uncommon in Chinese cities a few decades ago, from the precarious working class districts of 1930s Shanghai to the shanty towns of British-occupied Hong Kong in the 1950s onwards. How did China manage to develop in a way that decreased mass housing precarity?  What are the structural reasons behind it?

In recent years, China’s housing issue has been prominently featured in the Western media. Rapid urban development, skyrocketing prices, the dependency of local governments on land revenues, and the most “shocking”, the rumored bankruptcy of the real estate giant Evergrande, 13 years after the subprime mortgage crisis of 2007-2008 shook the world economy, aroused the attention of financial analysts everywhere. However, what is the actual situation of the real estate market in China and what is the government doing?

Tianxia is a complex, contested, and constantly-evolving concept. It embodies a range of meanings, from geography (demarcating a governed territory), to morality (defining political legitimacy), to subjectivity (representing the aspirations of the people), to politics (providing a vision for a world system), and much more.

Next month, on March 5, 2023, China’s annual “Two Sessions” (两会, liǎnghuì) will take place, at which the National People’s Congress (NPC) and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) will hold back-to-back meetings and set the direction of the country for the year.