One Zone, One Road: New Paths in Research on Theories of Cross Border Sub-Regional Cooperation

ABSTRACT: The “theory of sub-regional cooperation” has been universally acknowledged by scholars around the globe as one of the most promising developments in research on international cooperation. In China though, efforts to follow, critique and even apply this theory are extremely limited. Since the Chinese government proposed the notion of “one zone, one road” in 2013, cross-border sub-regional cooperation has become a key focus of Chinese scholarly research, with most scholars focusing on policy research and analysis or feasibility studies. To present though, only rarely does scholarship touch on the theoretical side of the picture, and it is this gap that the present article attempts to fill. Another shortcoming of previous research is that it has focused on state actors, and tended towards considering regional economic cooperation from a macro perspective. The “one zone, one road” concept of sub-regional cooperation on the other hand emphasizes the micro-level, focusing on individual localities as key units for research. Much more flexible, this approach considers how the transformation of boundaries from “gates” to “channels” serves to construct cross-regional economic functions.