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We are currently witnessing the evolution of two gigantic development programmes: the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Perceived and real differences notwithstanding, both place infrastructures at the heart of global development. The present article analyses the relations between this new developmental thinking and law. The fluid rearrangement of public and private, formal and informal legal frameworks spurred by BRI indicate the emergence of a transnational legal infrastructure both tied to and facilitated by a material pragmatism at odds with China's rhetorical embracement of international law as we know it. The implementation infrastructure of SDGs, for its part, reveals a resilience-driven style of governance difficult to reconcile with the futurity attaching to the idea of law. While these findings would suggest a retreat from international law, the present article argues that many types of global law are emerging and resurfacing from infrastructural developmentalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The primary objective of this study is to present the background and overview of the Chinese belt and road initiative (BRI) project while exploring views, opinions, skepticisms, and challenges related to this initiative. President Xi Jinping initiated the Silk Road Economic Belt (SREB) and the 21st‐century Maritime Silk Road (MSR) to boost regional cooperation, which was later officially named as the One Built One Road (OBOR) or BRI. To this date, more than 65 nations from Asia, Europe, and Northeast Africa have joined the "BRI," to revive the old silk road. In an official document, "the Vision and Action of the OBOR," China plans to realize five cooperation and development plans, comprising of six intercontinental economic corridors. These projects are expected to bring collective economic growth in BRI member economies while keeping China at the heart of such development. The five main facets of "OBOR" cooperation include infrastructure connectivity, policy communications, finance, trade, and people‐to‐people bonds to encourage regional cooperation and mutual growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses public space in China and explores how theories of public space can be applied to two waterfront projects. As case studies the paper compares two public waterfront projects: The 18 km Jinji Lake project in Suzhou and the 45km Huangpu River waterfront project in Shanghai, both completed in 2018. The Jinji lake development in the heart of Suzhou designed by EDAW later AECOM also boasts inclusive 24/7 access and people centered design. Democratic theory is commonly used in the West to discuss public space however Limin Hee argues that the discourse as understood in the western democratic tradition is not adequate for Asian cities (Hee, 2017). Constructing Singapore Public Space, Springer) This paper finds that although the idea of public space in China is argued to be an evolving concpt (Gaubatz, 2008, pp 72-83), notions of democratic participation, Human Centered Design (HCD) and place-making methods are central development policy in Chinese cities. Whereas terms like vibrancy and vitality are commonly used by scholars to evaluate and discuss public space in China, rather than democratic theory, theories from western scholars such as Habermas’s theory of the public sphere are also relevant and collaborative practices between civil society and the state are key to the participatory nature of Chinese public space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]