The six land corridors that are the‘Belt’ part of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) connectmore than sixty countries. As the initiative progresses,policy makers, analysts and researchers are trying to answera few open questions of which the most common are: How can acountry best benefit from the BRI? How should projects beprioritized and sequenced? What opportunities emerge as aresult of participating in the initiative? The authors use anetwork economics approach to answer some of these questionsand others. Our hypothesis is that the ability of countriesto maximize the benefits of BRI will depend on the positionof each country in the new connectivity maps that areemerging. Ultimately, an initiative such as the BRI willchange the way economic centers, as the most productivenodes in each country, are connected. Productivity,competition, market opportunities, and transport andlogistics costs are all likely to be impacted. However, themagnitude of the effects will depend on where along the Beltcorridors a city is located relative to all other countriesand economic centers. Ultimately, the difference in outcomeswill depend on whether a center intermediates trade flows inthe network or serves as an end node that generates inboundand outbound flows. Centers that are not well connected inthe new BRI maps may not experience much positive impact.Emphasis should therefore be on the weak links within the networks.
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