Since its inception, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has aimed to strengthen transnational connectivity through infrastructure development and trade facilitation, and thus become a focal point in the field of international political economy (IPE). This article offers a conceptual exploration of how the BRI is restructuring the IPE toward a multipolar order of geopolitical and geoeconomic cooperation. Drawing on Gramsci's analytical framework - particularly his insights into (counter)hegemony - I analyze how the BRI fosters a counterhegemonic movement among Global South actors, led by China, to build their own ladders of development and challenge neoliberal IPE. Addressing a synergy of ideas, institutions, and material capabilities, this analysis seeks to transcend the Western-centric neoliberal IPE by advancing a Southern-oriented international development paradigm. Specifically, the BRI has the potential to institutionalize developmental IPE which emphasizes infrastructure investment, industrial policy, and economic planning to foster industrialization and promote national development. By returning to Gramsci's theorization, this article offers a revised analytical lens through which to understand the restructuring of IPE. It foregrounds the possibility of a historical bloc forming around Global South interests, thereby expanding the theoretical and political terrain for rethinking global order beyond neoliberal orthodoxy.

Alongside China's deepening economic regionalisation with the lower Mekong countries (Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia), nonstate armed groups have continued to pose substantial security challenges such as drug trafficking, cyber scams, and commodity smuggling. This article examines China's security cooperation with Mekong states to address these nontraditional security (NTS) challenges and the geopolitical dynamics underpinning this cooperation. The cooperation framework encompasses regular joint patrols along the Mekong River, periodic intergovernmental meetings among law enforcement agencies, and the establishment of the Safe Mekong Coordination Center to intercept cross-border drug trafficking. This paper advances two main contributions. First, the Mekong joint patrol mechanism reveals the adaptability of state power in confronting NTS challenges. Rather than engaging in competitive sovereignty claims over water territories or ceding authority to non-state actors such as transnational criminal organisations, Mekong states have developed power-sharing arrangements that facilitate cooperative security regimes aimed at regional stability and economic development. Second, the study contributes to critical understandings of China's overseas security practices. While prevailing narratives often depict China as an ascendant and unrestrained regional hegemon, the empirical evidence reveals a more complex reality in which cooperative arrangements are shaped by both diplomatic principles and contested regional perceptions. The compliance with agreed-upon rules for joint patrols, coupled with the ambivalence among Southeast Asian states, underscores the contingent and negotiated character of China-led security initiatives.

Chinese border villages adjacent to Myanmar’s Shan and Kachin states are home to thousands of Myanmar wives. Although these women are not illegal border-crossers, they occupy an ambiguous position within China’s legal and administrative systems of population management. This paper examines how they are subjected to multidirectional forms of biopolitical control. It identifies three key techniques: political power exercised by the Chinese state, discursive power produced by international NGOs, and mundane power embedded in everyday interactions within local communities. At the same time, the paper highlights how these women actively negotiate and live with such forms of control. Their agency is manifested through cross-border mobility that sustains social and economic ties, their pursuit of civil recognition and rights within border villages, and their deployment of sociocultural capital. By foregrounding these dynamics, the paper unravels the complex relationship between the exercise of biopower and sociospatial exclusion at the border. It shows how multidirectional forces produce populations that are socially necessary yet politically precarious—subjects who are framed as needing to be “protected” or “governed,” often in ways that do not align with their own interests or lived realities.

The aim of this discussion forum is to understand whether the Donald Trump administration in the United States is an anomaly in the geopolitical order that emerged after the Cold War or whether it heralds a new geopolitical order. Currently, global power is characterized by a profound transformation in its forms and actors. There is no longer a single geometry of power based exclusively on the hegemony of great powers or on the classic struggle for territorial spheres of influence. Instead, we are witnessing the coexistence of multiple geometries—territorial, digital, financial, and logistical—that are constantly intertwined and reconfigured. The United States, China, Russia, and the European Union remain central actors, but their capacity for control is limited by global interdependence, the emergence of middle powers, and the influence of non-state actors, such as corporations, international organizations, and social movements. The resurgence of nationalist and protectionist policies, exemplified by the "America First" doctrine and the imposition of tariffs, has weakened the rules-based liberal international order and fostered more open competition for strategic resources and areas of influence. However, globalization, digital networks, and transnational flows of capital, information, and people challenge the rigidity of borders. So, has conflict intensified over cooperation in the current geopolitical order? Or are we definitively witnessing an irreversible transformation of the geopolitical order, even though the geometry of global power remains open and uncertain?

This article examines the rationale and emergent effects of state-led venture capital (SVC) investments as an urban developmental tool to pursue industrial upgrading. Building on the concept of urban state venturism, the article introduces a new framework to examine how state institutions in Hefei, the capital city of Anhui province in central China, became SVC investors in private firms with high growth potential. Juxtaposing published interviews by key state actors with 25 interviews with venture capital industry professionals and analysts, the Hefei case study highlights urban state venturism as a contextualized extension of Chinese state entrepreneurialism. This extension is characterized by a "high risk, high gain" approach to urban development in China that is increasingly prominent in the face of growth limitations in existing industrial pathways. The analysis complements emergent studies that accentuate the constitutive role of state entrepreneurialism in driving urban development and advances a large body of work on Chinese state actors' use of market tools to achieve their respective political objectives. (sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(SVC)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic),(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic).(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic),(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)((sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic))(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic) SVC (sic)(sic)(sic)(sic).(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic),(sic)(sic) 25 (sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic),(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic).(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)"(sic)(sic)(sic),(sic)(sic)(sic)"(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic),(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic),(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic).(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic),(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic).

The Laos-China Railway and the Muse-Mandalay Railway are two key projects of China-sponsored regional development. These two railway projects, both driven by the Chinese state to build economic corridors with its neighboring countries, achieve different outcomes, showing the complicated intersection of regional development, political interactions, and infrastructure construction. The former was completed as planned in 2021 and started to operate, but the latter made no progress. How do two seemingly similar railway projects, each backed by substantial economic and political support from the Chinese state, result in divergent outcomes? What are the geographical implications of infrastructure-led regional development in the Global South? To address these questions, this paper employs the concept of political agency to examine how domestic and bilateral political dynamics interact to shape the trajectories of large-scale infrastructure projects. We argue that China cannot unilaterally impose infrastructure projects on host nations; rather, project outcomes depend on political negotiations both within these countries and in their relations with China. Furthermore, host countries are not passive recipients of Chinese investment; they engage in bargaining, adaptation, resistance, or appropriation in ways that reflect their own political institutions, elite networks, and local power dynamics.

Due to large flows of cross-border tourists and their increasing geopolitical and geoeconomic influence, borders have become increasingly touristified. Entailing at least three impulses—commodification, desecuritization, and differentiation, the touristification of borders develops a nuanced understanding of borderscapes and bordering practices. Borders obtain new meanings and functions from a touristic perspective. Tourism as an epistemic frame means that it is not merely a set of economic activities related to the production and consumption of experiences, but also constitutes a perspective through which to explore issues concerning borders as a key space of geoeconomic and geopolitical interactions. Thus, the touristification of borders brings tourism scholars into productive conversations with scholars in other critical studies who investigate the interplay of mobility and power.

One essential question in the literature on trade governance concerns the relationship between state and non-state actors. This paper addresses the question by focusing on how the Chinese state deploys a strategy of cooperative control to govern cross-border trade with Myanmar. We identify three terrains of trade affairs - traffic flows, cross-border payment and anti-smuggling - which correspond to three modes of governance - active cooperation, acquiescence and compromise. It is found that the more the Chinese state cooperates to facilitate cross-border trade with Myanmar, the harder its unilateral crackdown on smuggling, showing the coordinative and coercive nature of state power to selectively cooperate with other actors. In the domain of cross-border trade, the Chinese state exercises cooperative control to forge network governance not in response to market dysfunction and state failure, but to overcome structural conditions brought by the territorial border between China and Myanmar. By analysing cooperative control at the border, this paper's contribution is to overcome the government versus governance dualism, and shed light on innovative strategies in spatial and administrative orchestration aiming to facilitate legal trade and deter illegal trade at the border.

Research on the urban process of capital accumulation has typically examined the state and capital as separate actors. This distinction is problematized by a long-standing, increasingly prominent but largely overlooked attempt by state institutions to drive urban development through venture capital (VC) investments. Conceptualized as urban state venturism in this paper, state-driven VC investments reflect at once a riskier extension of urban entrepreneurialism (through their speculative construction of place) and a transposition of state institutions into firm-level drivers of capitalist urbanization (through their roles as profit-oriented investors). To advance research on the urban process of capital accumulation through examining these imbricated state roles, this paper presents a new research agenda that comprises three dimensions, namely (i) the rationale of urban state venturism, (ii) the distribution of profits and risks, and (iii) the extent to which urban state venturism reflects state institutions' intrinsic commitment to a 'developmentalist' ideology. In turn, the agenda foregrounds the value of assessing 'new' state capitalism through urban state venturism.

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中国高教版《政治地理学》教材已沿用二十余年.在当前百年未有之大变局的背景下,冠以"政治地理学"的研究成果不断涌现,更加剧了甄别相关概念学理的紧迫性.为此,全国政治地理学课程的任课教师以及部分海外同行一道,围绕在现有教材的基础上如何深化教材特色、拓展教材内容,做到本土化、国际化和知识性、趣味性相结合,对政治地理学的教材建设进行了研讨.主要结论为:①在教材的特色化方面:要重视基本概念和理论的本土化;中西方理论视角的融合;多尺度内容体系的构建和应用知识的加强.②在教材的内容拓展方面:应关注并吸收行为主义、批判地缘政治、政治生态学、城市政治地理学、身份政治、选举地理等流派和视角.③在教材的应用面向方面:应加强对"一带一路"倡议、海洋强国建设、跨境河流治理等现实关切问题的理论响应.总体上,政治地理学教材建设要抓住人地关系主线,立足本土、融合经典、面向实践,构建知识导向、政策导向与学术研究良性互动的内容体系.本研究对于未来政治地理学教材的编写及修订、以及解决当下政治地理学的教与学的知识困扰具有重要的参考意义.

This article critically assesses state–market relations through a comparative firm-level study of state-led development in the China–Myanmar border region. It develops a framework that foregrounds how market building is a contingent and multi-scalar process that underpins the reproduction of stable state rule. The framework is utilized to examine state-led attempts in Ruili, a border city in Yunnan province, to attract Yinxiang, a privately owned firm, and Beijing Automotive Industry Holding Corporation (BAIC), a state-owned enterprise (SOEs), to launch flagship manufacturing projects. The contrasting performance of these firms—Yinxiang successfully captured its target market in Myanmar while BAIC did not even commence production—foregrounds a pronounced tension in the ongoing market reforms. On the one hand, attempts at giving market actors more autonomy in resource allocation through supply-side structural reforms continue to be shaped by the institutional legacy of reciprocal accountability. On the other hand, the Chinese state’s willingness to allow BAIC’s investment to fail suggests it is serious about subjecting both local governments and SOEs to demand-side discipline. These findings collectively generate one distinct contribution to existing research on state–market relations: market activities are embedded within state-building processes in place-specific and often unpredictable ways.

Recently the Chinese government has been actively collaborating with nonprofit nongovernmental organizations to provide social welfare services to older adults at the community level. The role played by NGOs in facilitating governance has only recently gained attention in the literature on Chinese NGOs and urban governance. Addressing this gap, the paper advances geographers' understanding of State-NGO collaborations in facilitating urban governance in the Chinese context using fieldwork in Beijing and Shanghai on the provision of community eldercare services as an example. It also explains the political control of these NGOs and their changing role in the eldercare market. We argue that collaborations between the state and NGOs in China have gradually transferred eldercare services to the NGOs, and led to a fragmented welfare system, which, as a consequence, has facilitated entrepreneurial urban governance. The paper sheds light on community-based organizations, their collaboration with local governments, and how they have become not only welfare providers but a significant site for social control.

More and more research has been conducted to examine individuated, affective, and embodied themes related to heritage landscapes. Following this recent trend, the paper analyzes how tourists experience heritage landscapes to retrieve positive feelings from the past and thus seek inspiration for a better life. Specifically, this paper has two objectives. First, it examines the embodied interactions between tourists and heritage landscapes in Lijiang Old Town, a well-known cultural heritage site in Yunnan, China. Studying these interactions will add substance to the affective aspect of heritage landscapes, showing the cultural value of heritage to individuals who live in a speedy world. Second, this paper attempts to understand the complex feelings developed by tourists towards heritage landscapes. We find that leisurely tourists attempt to enjoy heritage landscapes in order to counter their hectic pace of life in China's big cities. They engage in either strolling in the town to decode the cultural values of heritage landscapes or staying put to immerse themselves in a heritage aura, for the purpose of relaxation and slowness. All the positive feelings in the town can lead to selftransformation and even spiritual rejuvenation. By apprehending heritage for inspiration, a situated and relational picture of tourism consumption unfolds to highlight how tourists develop a subjective sense of and feeling about heritage..

Singapore Journal of Tropical GeographyEarly View Book Review Tourism Geopolitics: Assemblages of Infrastructure, Affect, and Imagination. Mary Mostafanezhad, Matilde Córdoba Azcárate, and Roger Norum (eds) . The University of Arizona Press, Tucson, USA, 2021, pp. xi +412. ISBN 978-0-816-53930-7 (hbk). Xiaobo Su, Corresponding Author Xiaobo Su xiaobo@uoregon.edu Department of Geography, University of Oregon Correspondence: email: xiaobo@uoregon.edu)Search for more papers by this author Xiaobo Su, Corresponding Author Xiaobo Su xiaobo@uoregon.edu Department of Geography, University of Oregon Correspondence: email: xiaobo@uoregon.edu)Search for more papers by this author First published: 13 July 2022 https://doi.org/10.1111/sjtg.12444Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Early ViewOnline Version of Record before inclusion in an issue RelatedInformation