ABSTRACT
By enhancing networks of connectivity and communication with countries along the route, the MSR Initiative is not only to elevate China’s global influence, but also to step up China’s geostrategic importance in the Indo-Pacific region and Eurasia. It is important to examine how significant and what profound implication China will bring about. It will obviously generate strategic shift. In the past, the sea lanes of communication (SLOCs) along the Indo-Pacific region largely provided energy supplies channels to Asia. Through the new efforts of the MSR Initiative, China would take advantage of its convenience at sea by increasingly importing energy from the Middle East and Africa, and exporting its over-capacity of industrial outputs to global markets.
While the MSR Initiative would facilitate better connectivity and communication networks all along the route, it could at the same time help assure safety of SLOCs. It is not just to promote individual national interest, but also would bring about regional security in the Indo-Pacific. This chapter explores the extent of the MSR Initiative in generating a change of geopolitical structure in the Indo-Pacific and how the MSR Initiative may enhance the safety of SLOCs.
