The Project

Our research consortium De:link // Re:link – Local perspectives on transregional processes of (dis)entanglements is a joint project founded to study the effects of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) from an area-studies perspective. The project is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (since April 2025: Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space) and made up of researchers from four institutions: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (HU), the Centre for East European and International Studies (ZOiS), the Bonn International Centre for Conflict Studies (BICC), and the Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO). It is currently in its second phase, following completion of the initial phase in March 2024.

The BRI, announced by President Xi Jinping in 2013, is a large-scale infrastructure project that aims to connect the People’s Republic of China with countries in Asia, Africa, and Europe. In promoting the initiative, reference is regularly made to the “Old Silk Roads” as a historically successful example of transcultural trade and exchange of goods and ideas. The current geopolitical and geocultural advance of the People’s Republic renders the BRI an element of China’s “New Silk Roads”.

We examine the processes of coupling and decoupling that are occurring in the course of the New Silk Roads project from an area-studies perspective. In particular, we focus on the following questions:

  • // Which local perspectives, responses, reactions, assessments, initiatives, and mobilizations are emerging in relation to the transregional project BRI?
  • // How is Asia–Africa–Europe reconfigured and strategically linked in the interaction of many different actors – politically-institutionally, socio-economically, culturally, linguistically, and strategically?
  • // How and by what means does the competition of – not only economic – development models, narratives, institutions, and strategies play out in this space?

Likewise, we are interested in the (cultural-)political implications of the BRI; for example, in view of German and European policymaking and political agenda-setting.