Building a Belt & Road Educational Community: An Emerging Education Space?

In recent years, the rise of China and its numerous development projects has generated heated debates internationally. The Belt and Road initiative is one of such flagship initiatives China has promoted aiming to reconnect the Eurasian Continent and to revive the prosperity of the historical New Silk region. Despite the fact that current extant literature on the topic is overwhelmingly focusing on geo-political and geo-economic reasonings and implications, there has been a growing interest from scholars in other disciplines, including education. This paper adopts an alternative angle to investigates the role of education in the region building of Belt & Road, specially focusing on tensions between policy rhetoric and realities of development. Against the background of China’s rise and its policy initiative, will it be possible to create a ‘Belt & Road’ educational community? I examine relevant policies and the ways in which policies transformed into practical actions; analyse the conditions both for and against the aspiration to building an emerging education space. The findings suggest there are strong momentums for enabling a new higher education space, yet the complexity of the region and beyond has also created challenges for functional, organisational and political education integration.