The New Silk Roads: The Present and Future of the World

Peter Frankopan — Professor of Global History at Oxford and author of the bestselling Silk Roads — provides in this shorter follow-up the most accessible available account of China's Belt and Road Initiative and the broader geopolitical reorientation it represents. The book argues that the centre of gravity of global power is shifting back towards Asia, that China's infrastructure investments across Central Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Europe are building a new architecture of economic and political influence, and that Western policymakers have been dangerously slow to understand the implications.

The relevance to the information environment is indirect but significant. China's Belt and Road investments create economic dependencies that translate into political leverage — leverage that affects the information environments of recipient countries by creating incentives to suppress criticism of China and to accept Chinese technology infrastructure including surveillance systems and media content. For practitioners working on the geopolitical context of Chinese influence operations, understanding the Belt and Road as an information environment play as well as an economic one is essential. Frankopan writes with the authority of a serious historian and the accessibility of a skilled popular communicator.