China's Eurasian Dilemmas: Roads and Risks for a Sustainable Global Power

This book provides an overview of China’s engagement with Eurasia, focusing on 21st century challenges that will need careful management over coming decades. China’s emerging role goes well beyond the standard ‘geopolitics’ of the Eurasian ‘chess board’. China is seeking to evolve new agenda and relationships that avoid the dilemma posed by its slowing economy and potential containment by the United States. This will be a challenging task given divergent perceptions of global issues by the EU, Russia and China, and the changing Eurasian balance of power only partly moderated by bilateral dialogues and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). Here the implementation of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) will be a necessary but complex task, forcing China into intensified engagement with conflict prone regions across Eurasia, thereby posing several environmental, developmental and strategic dilemmas. PRC has a tight time-frame to establish itself as an essential arbiter in Eurasian integrative processes and emerge as a sustainable global power.