The BRI, logistics, and global infrastructure: New world order, the game of Go, and the disposition of Shi

This contribution discusses the concept of logistics in the apparatus of global infrastructure, focusing on the China-led Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) projects that have directly or indirectly involved different parts of the world. What is the motor behind this project? Is the will of Chinese President Xi Jinping the sole pushing force behind this BRI projects? What does he want? Through the process of my research, I realized that one person’s power could not achieve the automatic apparatus that drives this gigantic engine. Instead, it requires the participation, or desire, from all sides and for different purposes. My questions then evolve into a different dimension. What is the imaginary of this global vision or total vision? What is “the infrastructure of the infrastructure” that undergirds this OBOR project? How is the global infrastructure invested, with what interest, and through what sectors? Why does China employ rhetoric such as Confucian virtues, harmony under the tianxia, Third World brotherhood, and so on to advocate the BRI? I want to address the above diverse questions through the concept of logistics. I shall bring in the idea of the Chinese game of Go and the disposition of Shi (勢). I argue that the Chinese concept of the disposition of Shi, the administration of the circumstances and situation, can help us better understand the BRI strategic economy in managing this new world order and its potential development.