Speakers: Hasan Karrar (Mushtaq Ahmad Gurmani School of Humanities and Social Sciences, LUMS)
Discussant: Nausheen H. Anwar (Institute of Business Administration)
Chaired by: Fatima Tassadiq (University of Sheffield)
About this event:
This event will take place online on Friday 24th February 2023 1000-1130 (GMT) and in person in Pakistan 1500-1630 (PST)
China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), that has been gradually unrolled since 2013, has been described as a contemporary Silk Road. But is this ahistorical trope useful in parsing the Belt and Road Initiative? Drawing from the experience of Pakistan, an eager, early adaptor state to the BRI, Professor Karrar offers alternate ways of thinking about proximity between the two countries: Cold War and post-Cold War strategic alignment, and the dovetailing of Chinese investment with state and private commercial interests in Pakistan. He also suggests that material infrastructure – past and planned – has played an essential role in realizing the proximity between both the two countries.
About the GlobalCORRIDOR project.
This seminar is part of the GlobalCORRIDOR seminar series. The ERC funded GlobalCORRIDOR project investigates, through a comparative lens, infrastructures, urbanisation processes, technologies and inequality in East Africa, Pakistan, and the Mediterranean.