CHINA'S BELT AND ROAD INITIATIVE: CIVIL ENGINEERING IMPLICATIONS

摘要

China has embarked on an initiative to link Asia, Europe, and other parts of the world with high-speed rail and other forms of transportation; this initiative is entitled the "Belt and Road." The word "road" alludes to a 21st century version of the ancient Silk Road from China to Persia and beyond to Europe. The word "belt" suggests an economic corridor fanning out from this route. CSCE was invited to attend the Belt and Road International Forum of Civil Engineering in Beijing November 2015. The first day of the two day forum included a description of the initiative as well as speakers from civil engineering societies around the world. CSCE's presentation identified challenges that currently face civil engineers (including aging infrastructure, technological change, and climate change) leading to CSCE's strategic plan centered on sustainable infrastructure. In two parallel sessions on the second day of the forum, speakers from China identified challenges faced by their ambitious initiative; one session focused on traffic and tunnel aspects of the initiative and the other session focused on architectural heritage and architectural engineering aspects of the initiative. In addition to providing a thumbnail sketch of the forum content, this paper asks questions about this initiative and speculates on their answers. These questions and answers are primarily from a civil engineering perspective, but necessarily fall within global, geopolitical initiatives which civil engineering serves. We conclude that civil engineers around the world should monitor this unprecedented infrastructure project and we suggest that Canadian civil engineers have sustainability expertise to contribute.