Regional development implications of the Belt and Road Initiative: A case study of Darwin

Abstract

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is a national strategy proposed by China to strengthen globalisation and driving economic and regional development, creating a new form of global connectivity. The BRI especially drives infrastructure investments along the ‘’21st-Century Maritime Silk Road’’, highlighting the importance of port investments for regional and national development. Against this background, the role of regional institutional actors in co-shaping territorial development driven by ‘’Silk Road Globalisation’’ as a new form of globalised regional development is presented. Drawing on the case of Darwin in Northern Territory, Australia, the notion of “strategic coupling” in peripheral spaces in the Global Norths is expanded. Findings are drawn from a comprehensive, empirical data collection, consisting of in-depth interviews from 2020, as well as a media and document analysis. The analysis reveals that although regional institutional actors participate in Darwin’s territorial development processes: most notably mixed actor’s interest coalitions of governmental and non-governmental actors have a significant leverage in these development processes at the sub-national level. The data suggests complex institutional arrangements of Chinese and Australian linkages in tying Darwin’s assets with sino-centric Global Production Networks. Meanwhile showing that the created value may suit the actor’s interest but does not necessarily cause regional development. This represents a rather unbalanced form of structural coupling, which contrasts with the balanced process of strategic coupling described in the GPN literature.