The Belt and Road Initiative in South–South Cooperation: The Impact on World Trade and Geopolitics, a book co-authored by Prof Edmund Sheng Li and Dr Dmitri Felix do Nascimento in the Faculty of Social Science (FSS), University of Macau (UM), has been published by the major international publisher Palgrave MacMillan. The book is not only one of the first academic works to explore China’s ‘Major Country Diplomacy with Chinese Characteristics’; it is also the first English book on this topic ever produced in the Greater China region. It is a comprehensive study with significant academic and policy value.

The South-South cooperation, which began in the 1950s, aims to facilitate mutually beneficial joint development of developing countries, and has become an indispensable part of bilateral and multilateral international cooperation. As an important embodiment of the ‘Major Country Diplomacy with Chinese Characteristics’ in the new era under the guidance of Xi Jinping’s Thoughts on Diplomacy, the BRI has provided new opportunities for South-South cooperation, has had a profound impact on international trade and geopolitics, and has attracted the attention of scholars both at home and abroad.

The book is divided into four parts: (1) The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI): the South-South cooperation with Chinese characteristics, (2) The BRI and China’s new role in geopolitical and security issues, (3) The BRI and its ‘economic corridors’: opportunities for development, (4) Technological and financial integration in the BRI.

The book seeks to illuminate what the BRI truly means for the global south, offering a historical context and explaining the vision the Chinese government has in coordinating actions in the territorial, political, and economic spheres in a multilateral pretension. Moreover, the authors also provide a new framework for understanding the BRI, which will be useful to scholars, policymakers, and economists.

Prof Sheng is the associate dean of academic affairs of the FSS, professor of political economy and public policy, director of the Russian Centre, and coordinator of the Master of Arts in European Studies programme. His research interests include urban political economy and international political economy, and his teaching areas are economics and international relations. Prof Sheng has published 42 papers in Social Sciences Citation Index-listed journals and five books in foreign languages. He has headed or participated in more than ten key research programmes at national or SAR level. In addition, Prof Sheng received a first prize (in the research paper category) at both the third and the fifth Outstanding Achievement Awards for Macao Research in Humanities and Social Sciences, as well as a second prize (in the humanities and social sciences category) at the eighth Ministry of Education Scientific Research Outstanding Achievement Award.