Ankur Shah: Exploring BRI Projects Along the Sino-Russian Border
Ankur Shah (安然) is a Yenching Scholar at Peking University, a National Geographic Young Explorer and a regular contributor to the UNESCO Silk Roads Programme. His work focuses on the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and China-Russia relations.
Ankur earned a degree in Chinese and Russian from the University of Edinburgh. During his studies he spent 15 months living between Sichuan and St Petersburg and worked on the Trans-Siberian Express from Moscow to Vladivostok.
Swapping train tracks for the open road, in 2017, Ankur led a fully-funded 23,000 km along the Silk Roads from Venice to Xi'an in which he visited over a dozen BRI projects across Eurasia. In his latest expedition, Ankur spent August and September 2019 researching the BRI along the 4,300 km China-Russia border, sponsored by the FutureMap Foundation, CSIS Reconnecting Asia and the IISS of Peking University. Reach out to Ankur on Linkedin.
On this podcast, Ankur Shah shares his observations from driving a 4,300 km land border between China and Russia. He also gives an accurate analysis of the state of Belt and Road initiative on the ground and the nature of the cooperation between the two countries. Much of what Ankur reveals is in stark contrast to current media perceptions of the state of China-Russia cooperation with regard to infrastructure.
More information on the expedition can be found by referencing the articles Ankur wrote on the trip: Nikkei Asia and CSIS.
播客汉语配音人员： 王少勋 (James LaLonde) 臧力榕 (Ankur Shah)
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Ankur Shah (安然)
