Connectivity, Cooperation and Collaboration: China-South Asia Partnerships Under the Scientific Belt and Road Initiative

Innovation is a key word for poverty lifting and economic growth for genuine Asian rebalancing. Since the proposal of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2013, China-South Asia Exposition was created biannually on the basis of the former South Asian Countries Commodity Fairs. Since 2015, China-South Asia Conference on Technology Transfer and Innovation Cooperation has been carried out annually in Kunming City of Yunnan, which also launched the China-South Asia Science and Technology Partnership Programme. There have been criticisms that the science BRI may be a decisive strategic manoeuvre for China to move from a rule-taker to rule-maker, that the low- and middle-income countries might be manipulated, negatively influenced by debt and environmental harm. From the regional knowledge commons’ perspective, connectivity realized during the Ancient Silk Road, cooperation among developing countries to avoid the capital adverse current, and collaborative innovation to stimulate collective wisdom may explain the self-governance mechanism of innovation commons in the region of South Asia.