One Belt, One Road, One World: Where is US Business Connectivity?
Chapter 4 examines US business connectivity with China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and provides insights into global cooperation between the world’s two largest economies in the emerging digital age. Informed by resource-based and institutional views, the analysis shows how potential US connectivity to the current BRI could provide windfall gains for US firms possessing competitive ownership advantage, with the advent of the Cyber/Digital and Maritime Silk Roads. This analysis also reveals potential costs and risks with such an involvement in the uncertainty of USA–China bilateral relations. Notwithstanding geopolitical differences, nation-state boundaries, resurgent protectionist movements, and regional markets, BRI partner countries are likely to experience much deeper connectivity as a result of intensifying international trade and investment integration, and concomitant cyberspace developments in countries such as the USA and China.