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In as much as it is contested, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is also unexplored, underdiscussed, and, as a result, misunderstood. Frequently viewed through the lens of international relations and global economy, the diverse dimensions of collaboration, including business and research-industry clusters, that BRI enhances, tend to be excluded from the analysis. In a similar manner, the role of the Arab Peninsula in the grand strategy underpinning BRI and its implementation is rarely discussed. BRI is a forward-oriented initiative, an attempt to reap benefits of developments and circumstances that are only nascent. This bears two potent implications. First, as China attempts to influence the context in which it operates, it is subject to change itself; the Chinese business sector evolution attests to that. Second, some of China’s not so obvious partners of today, including those in the Arab Peninsula, are about to turn into key interlocutors of tomorrow. BRI taps into opportunities thus created. This chapter elaborates on these issues and, against this backdrop, outlines how the remaining chapters included in this volume add to this discussion.

The study aims to examine the causes of the divergent patterns of contemporary transnational engagement with China among new Chinese immigrants and the effect of transnational entrepreneurship on migrants’ integration into their host societies.

It is based on a multi-sited ethnographic study that contains interviews, participant observations, and analysis of relevant event coverage and commentaries by the media, which were conducted between 2008 and 2013 in Singapore, the United States, and China.

The study finds that different migration histories, structural circumstances in both sending and receiving societies, and locations in the transnational social field give rise to divergent patterns of economic transnationalism, and that the rise of China has opened up new avenues for transnational entrepreneurship, which has not only benefited hometown development in China but also created economic opportunities for Chinese immigrants, leading to desirable mobility outcomes. In particular, transnational entrepreneurship has promoted deeper localization rather than deterritorialization and contributed to strengthening the economic base of the existing ethnic enclave, which in turn offers an effective alternative path for migrants’ integration in their host societies.

The study is exploratory in nature. As with all ethnographic studies, its generalizability is limited.

The study suggests that, when transnational entrepreneurship is linked to the existing ethnic social structure in which a particular identity is formed, the effect on the group becomes highly significant. The comparative approach of the study can help unveil different dynamics, processes, and consequences of transnationalism and complex factors behind variations on diasporic development and immigrant integration.

Looking at entrepreneurship beyond nation-state boundaries and beyond the economic gains of individual migrants.

Diversity and uncertainty summarise Taiwan’s Generation Z. Diversity because the background of fewer than 3.4 million Taiwanese, which is less than 20% of the overall population, cannot be included in a ‘one-fits-all’ category. As a sovereign nation, Taiwan has developed through various cultural, economic, and political stages. Democratic freedom has given the Taiwanese the right and terrain to de-Sinicise their homeland and politically construct ‘Taiwanese Consciousness’. These points are essential, because this is the societal fabric given to Generation Zers. Apart from national identity, this chapter illustrates the uncertainties that Generation Zers are facing in relation to education, job opportunities, and living standards. It is suggested that conditions are easier for those that have received ‘superior’ education and have enjoyed family-economic support. Their consumer behaviour, Generation Z in the workplace, as well as voters are also carefully analysed in this chapter.

This chapter builds on the authors’ research into the internationalization of China’s higher education (HE) as soft power with “Chinese characteristics” (Lo & Pan, 2020). It rethinks the “Chinese characteristics” in contemporary China’s internationalization of HE as soft power, by contextualizing them in the historico-cultural rootedness that legitimizes the sense of Chinese exceptionalism in the Party-state’s global re-emergence. It also sheds light on the tension and paradox therein through analyzing the conflicts generated by the Party-state’s attempts at re-globalizing the Chinese world order alongside the Westphalian system. In addition to integrating the soft-power concepts coined by Joseph Nye (1990) with the dimensional perspectives on the internationalization of HE framed by Jane Knight (1997), this study also puts in China’s perspectives that stand in contrast to, and yet in confluence with, some of the current norms and values being espoused by the West. In so doing, it demonstrates the potentiality of employing comparative lenses that cut across times, spaces and cultures in the research into internationalization of HE as soft power with national characteristics.