One Belt One Road Initiative ('OBOR'): Editorial

Abstract

The One Belt One Road Initiative (“OBOR”) more recently also labelled as Belt and Road (“B&R”) or Belt and Road Initiative (“BRI”) has been the Chinese development strategy aiming at the economic integration of Eurasia and the growth of China's Western Provinces, largely through the infrastructural and transportation projects. OBOR's core idea has been to revive ancient land-trade routes in the framework of the Silk Road Economic Belt project (“SREB”) supported by the Twenty-first Century Maritime Silk Road (“21MSR”) as proposed by Xi Jinping in Autumn 2013 first in Kazakhstan with regard to the SREB, and subsequently in Indonesia with regard to the 21MSR. In addition, the OBOR/SREB also includes regional platforms of co-operation, particularly the 16 1 Group (G16 1) gathering China and Central and Eastern European countries (“CEEs”) which was established in April 2012 in Warsaw, that is over a year ahead of the announcement of the OBOR.

The OBOR has been pictured as a mostly geopolitical project with potentially far-reaching economic ramifications. Thus, the OBOR has for long attracted massive attention from commentators and scholars focusing on politics, international relations and economics. However, for the time being, the OBOR is still at the very initial phase of realisation and its success essentially depends on the formation of efficient institutional and regulatory environment along OBOR's trade routes. We initially identified and classified a number of potential OBOR-related problems, inviting contributors to explore the legal dimensions of the controversy surrounding the OBOR.