The Emperor's New Road

China and the Project of the Century

By: Jonathan E. Hillman

Narrated by: Eric Jason Martin

Length: 8 hrs and 25 mins

Publisher's summary

A prominent authority on China's Belt and Road Initiative reveals the global risks lurking within Beijing's project of the century.

China's Belt and Road Initiative is the world's most ambitious and misunderstood geoeconomic vision. To carry out President Xi's flagship foreign-policy effort, China promises to spend more than one trillion dollars for new ports, railways, fiber-optic cables, power plants, and other connections. It touches more than 130 countries and has expanded into the Arctic, cyberspace, and even outer space. Beijing promises that it is promoting global development, but Washington warns that it is charting a path to global dominance.

Taking listeners on a journey to China's projects in Asia, Europe, and Africa, Jonathan E. Hillman reveals how this grand vision is unfolding on the ground. As China pushes beyond its borders and deep into dangerous terrain, it is repeating the mistakes of the great powers that came before it, Hillman argues. If China succeeds, it will remake the world and place itself at the center of everything. But Xi may be overreaching: All roads do not yet lead to Beijing.

©2020 Jonathan E. Hillman (P)2020 Tantor

When did William Shatner start narrating books?

Seriously- this was the worst reading of an audio book I’ve ever heard. The over-enunciation was distracting to the point of causing critical points to be missed. Interesting story.

Boring and Fascinating

This is a well-told story with many salient facts about China's BRI. While I would have liked to speed up the story at times, the abundance of information was useful and enlightening. I came away with a much deeper understanding of China's economic operations throughout the developing world.

Excellent overview of BRI!!

Not fully familiar w/ the geography… Required maximum imagination and much googling! A read well worthwhile!!!!

Engaging Narrative

An enjoyable listen packed with facts, history, analysis, and even unexpected witty humor that had me laughing out loud at least once per chapter.
Author provides a valuable, informed perspective that makes this a highly worthwhile read.

Objective analysis in era of contentious division.

Well narrated, this rendition provides audio travel-log and historical analogy in a fabulous epic-style overview of China’s amazing Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The refreshing style is almost politically agnostic addressing such difficult topics as ethnic cleansing and imperialism practices throughout history since the Roman Empire with technology updates of our nearly Sci-fi current communications technologies. — Have an Atlas at the ready, or a map-app, to fully enjoy the first hand travel-stories of the author cris-crossing several continents.

Informative

Very informative, explaining a number of underlying related issues. Performance seemed a bit "staccato", but acceptable

Lackluster

Meandering storytelling that lacks details on what the BRI encompasses. Author focuses on prior history of countries receiving aid; not the total impact or how it affects China.

Pretty Good

This book focuses very much on the economic side of China’s international relations. As Chinese relationships in one country are quite similar to other countries, some chapters seemed repetitive but it was just due to the nature of the situation.

Excellent book

Really great book. The author travels the world searching for Belt and Road Initiative investments. And you get to be along for the journey.

Propaganda

It's book like this that perpetrate the mistrust and war mongering stance of the west. Simply it is the pot calling the kettle black. Yeah, the west has been saying that China will screw everyone involved in the belt and road initiative, due to the west been doing this for many many years to other countries. So the default way of thinking is China is doing the same. The US has been doing this for geo-political and military gain. China's interest is all on economics. That's the biggest difference. This book makes all reader think that China's motive is the same as US. Completely biased and lopsided view point.
One more, the narrator couldn't even pronounce a single word of Chinese correctly, just to show a more balance narrative, at least the narration should have a better pronunciation of names and sentences.