Promoting the construction of the Belt and Road initiative (BRI) towards a new stage of high-quality development raises new subjects for academic research, which demands in-depth study of existing BRI projects, summarizing experiences and lessons and theorizing construction models to guide future development. Research in the field of economic geography focused on outward foreign direct investment (FDI) of Chinese firms, but BRI construction is much broader in scope, consisting of not only FDI projects but also China-financed projects and emerging mixed projects. Case studies of BRI projects have shown that significant cultural and institutional difference between China and host country is the factor that tends to be ignored by Chinese firms in the "going global" efforts. Thus, revisiting the institutional and cultural turn in economic geography and employing its research framework to analyze BRI projects and summarize their construction models may contribute to the development of both economic geography and BRI. This article will first briefly review the background and research trends of the institutional and cultural turn; then summarize three major construction models of BRI projects, namely EPC (Engineering Procurement Construction)-based, concession-based and FDI models; finally draw on the institutional and cultural turn to classify BRI projects according to two indicators of "Breadth and Depth of Territorial Embeddedness" and "Destructive Effects of Technology and Project" into four types, i.e. transformative, supportive and ordinary projects as well as industrial parks. Different institutional and cultural sensitivity can be identified for each type of projects. The preliminary theorization proposed in this article may offer a potential framework for future research on BRI construction.

Since the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) was proposed, the pace of projects investment and construction has been accelerated, which accumulated much experience in the going-out strategy in the context of BRI. Modern railway projects are characterized by "natural monopoly", as well as huge investment and extensive geographical coverage. Moreover, their construction is a typical transformative project, which embedded the necessary institution and culture. The countries along the Silk Road are characterized by weak institutional construction, lack of regulatory system, and underdeveloped industrial civilization, therefore they cannot operate and manage the railway system. In this context, all links, including financing, design, construction, and operation, should be considered in the going-out process of China's railway system. The transfer subject is the technology-institution-culture nexus which takes railway technology as the core. In other words, to achieve railway technology transfer successfully, the host countries should offer rational institutional guarantee and cultural adaptation. Besides, the technical standard of railway construction, management mode, and industry chain in the process of railway operation and maintenance need to be localized. Mombasa-Nairobi standard gauge railway is a successful going-out case of China's railway technology. Learning from the case, this paper proposed the concept of "embedded technology transfer" and constructed the theoretical model of technology-institution-culture nexus transfer. The results can provide references for the transfer of transformative projects or technologies between countries with different institutions and cultures.

The implementation of the Belt and Road Initiative and the increasing frequency of the China-Europe Express have brought new changes to the production system of enterprises along the Belt and Road regions. On the basis of summarizing the evolution of production system of enterprises, this paper takes TCL Poland Plant as an example to conduct an in-depth study on the characteristics of the plant's current production system and its differences from the original production organization mode, and analyzes the impact of the China-Europe Express on its current production system. Some conclusions can be drawn as follows. (1) China-Europe Express had a great impact on the production system of TCL Poland Plant, which is mainly manifested in the following aspects. First, the transportation of raw materials by China-Europe Express Train improves the time efficiency and shortens the whole supply chain. Second, China-Europe Express acts as a "moving inventory", which realizes the flexibility of raw material inventory and "zero inventory" effect based on the punctual transportation. Third, the time and inventory benefits brought by China-Europe Express speed up the response to European market. The comprehensive benefits brought by China-Europe Express lead to a more punctual and lean production system, meet the diversified needs of consumers on account of product quality and diversification, and improve ability to expand European market. (2) On the basis of abandoning the original "Rigid Mass Production" system, we argue that TCL Poland Plant formed a unique production system—"Global Fluid Just-in-Time" which absorbed the essence of Toyota Production System based on the punctual global transportation of China-Europe Express Train. (3) The differences between the current and the original production systems of TCL Poland Plant are mainly focused on the following aspects: the difference of transportation and storage mode of raw materials, and the changes of production line, production mode and quality inspection organization, etc.

The development of a country at a certain stage is an outcome of a long-term historical accumulation process, which forms a mutually adaptive state of development among the main national factors such as institution, economic, cultural and technological systems. And the technology transfer breaking through the original level will cause a disorder among the institutional-economic-cultural-technological systems (IECT system), and produce the frictional effect of technology-environment. This paper constructed a conceptual model on the complex system among the institution, economy, culture and technology, and analyzed its major features. Then, we simplified the above model into railway-institution-economic-cultural model (RIEC system) and probed the adaptive mechanism between railway and institutional-economic-cultural system. Furthermore, we explored the institutional-economic-cultural adaptability of the Addis Ababa-Djibouti Railway. This article insists that Ethiopia and Djibouti had not experienced the large-scale industrialization. As an electrified railway, the Addis Ababa-Djibouti Railway is a "spanning transfer" of the technology and there is a misplacement between this railway and the developing stage of Ethiopia and Djibouti. And the construction and operation of this railway brought out an obvious challenge for the institutional-economic-cultural development of these two countries, which resulted in the inadaptability of local institutional, economic and cultural system, and the unbalance of RIEC system. This study can provide a scientific guidance for China's enterprises to construct railways and spread China's railway standard in the world especially in the less-developed countries.

Since the launch of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2013, China's overseas industrial parks have become an important platform for Chinese enterprises to "go global in groups", and also for promoting economic and trade cooperation between China and other countries involved in the BRI. The high-profile intergovernmental industrial parks are at the highest cooperation level, large in investment scale, and rapid in construction progress. Moreover, they are expected by Chinese government to play a demonstration role for the joint construction of the BRI. Against the backdrop, intergovernmental industrial parks have attracted increasing attention from policymakers and academics at home and abroad. However, existing research on overseas parks tends to be policy-oriented, and did not make distinction between the intergovernmental industrial parks from the overseas parks established by private enterprises. Few studies have been conducted so far on construction mechanism of overseas industrial parks from a perspective of multi-scale coupling. This article tries to fill this gap to examine the multi-scale coupling mechanisms of intergovernmental cooperative parks in the framework of the BRI, taking the China-Belarus Industrial Park as an example. This industrial park was launched in 2010 jointly by the presidents of the two countries as a flagship project of the BRI. Now it becomes a new growth pole of the Minsk city. The research shows that the construction of the high-profile overseas industrial parks is a dynamic process, through which the two governments, park developers and park enterprises coordinate, mediate, and arbitrage strategic interests in the global economy, and also pursue common goals. This process involves multi-actors (government, corporations) from various scales (global, intergovernmental, industrial park, corporations). Specifically, the governments of the two countries launched the projects for their respective strategic interests. The intergovernmental cooperation frameworks and mechanisms provide an institutional framework for coordinating the strategic interests of both sides, and also mobilizing the political and economic resources from the two countries and beyond to promote the high-end project. But the top-level cooperation mechanisms cannot automatically guarantee the project's success. The keys are reasonable equity structure of the park development company and its strengths of networking with the global partners. At the same time, the economic performance of the enterprises inside the industrial parks is the fundamental to parks' sustainable development. Therefore, only when the strategic interests of the two countries are properly handled and the economic benefits of the development company and the companies related with the project, the industrial park can survive and develop smoothly. Hopefully, this research can provide a scientific basis for promoting the high-quality development of China's overseas parks.

Policy mobility research has become an important subfield in political geography. Overseas industrial zones serve as burgeoning case areas to testify the theoretical framework of policy mobility, whose development is a key component of the Belt and Road Initiative and an expected experimental way to promote inclusive globalization. The highlight of this paper is the role that the partnership plays for multi-scalar actors in the process of policy mobility when it comes to the overseas industrial zones. In this paper, we interpret Thai-Chinese Rayong Industrial Zone's evolving strategies and development trajectory through two interrelated conceptual lenses, namely, policy mobility and partnership. It is emphasized that the policy mobility of overseas industrial zones is a multi-scalar process of gradual advancement, and the partnership plays an important role in policy mobility. This paper systematically analyzes the institutional background and main partners of Thai-Chinese Rayong Industrial Zone. Policy mobility in terms of tax, land, talent and other elements are shaped and accelerated by the interactions and partnership between Thai and Chinese central governments, local governments, and leading enterprises. Finally, the policy recommendations are proposed for the sustainable development of China's overseas industrial zones in the context of Belt and Road Initiative.

At present, overseas industrial parks have become an important platform for economic and trade cooperation between China and other countries involved in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), and they are playing an increasingly important role in the construction of the BRI. Most existing studies on overseas industrial parks of China focus on the economic function, while the institutional and cultural platform function need to be further explored. Based on the perspective of the institution and culture, the paper takes Sihanoukville Special Economic Zone in Cambodia as a case to analyze the operating mechanism and construction model of overseas industrial parks, and reveals the role of overseas industrial parks in promoting the outward foreign direct investment of Chinese small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The results show that the Sihanoukville Special Economic Zone has provided a high-quality institutional environment and sufficient transnational development space for the enterprises entering the zone by constructing a multi-level coordination mechanism, creating an excellent investment environment, promoting information and resource sharing, and releasing the agglomeration economic effects. It assists enterprises in the zone to better adapt to the host country's investment, and provides more possibilities for a large number of small and medium-sized enterprises to make path breakthrough and path innovation in their overseas investments. On the basis of the case study, we believe that overseas industrial parks have played an important role in promoting Chinese small and medium-sized enterprises' overseas investment, providing buffer space and growth environment for overcoming institutional and cultural differences in Chinese enterprises' overseas investment, and played a role as an "Investor Garden".