China’s Science Silk Road and the New Geopolitics of Knowledge Production examines how China’s expanding international cooperation in science, technology, and innovation is reshaping global knowledge production. As part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the “Science Silk Road” is a program through which China promotes investment in science, technology, and innovation, fostering new infrastructures, networks, and partnerships with implications for the South, North, and beyond.
This four-year project investigates how these developments shape research, society, and development in BRI countries and globally by mapping the “Science Silk Road’s” multi-level impacts on partner countries, established science powers, and international scientific cooperation. Jointly led by Anna L. Ahlers, Han Cheng, and Hang Zhou, and based at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science and Université Laval, the project brings together perspectives from international relations, sociology of science, science and technology studies, anthropology, and geography. In doing so, it contributes to wider theoretical and policy debates at the intersection of science, development, and geopolitics in the twenty-first century.
Partners
Founder
