Editorial

• Pages: 725-727
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/IJLM-10-2020-367
• Date: 01 October 2020
• Published date: 01 October 2020
• Author: Paul Tae-Woo Lee,Kamonchanok Suthiwartnarueput,Kevin X Li,Ying-En Ge
• Subject Matter: Logistics,Management science & operations

Editorial

Special issue on “Impacts of the Belt and Road Initiative on Global Supply Chains

and International Logistics”

Since China implemented the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2013, approximately 190

academic papers in the field of global supply chains, international logistics and

transportation field in association with the BRI have been published in more than 70 SSCI/

SCI/SCIE indexed journals in the period of 2013–2020 (Lee et al., 2020). The research trends in

the above field are broadly categorized into four groups: (1) multimodal transportation in

association with the Maritime Silk Road, (2) railway transportation in association with

sustainability, supply chain management and cross-border issues, (3) the contribution of

infrastructure to international trade and regional economy and (4) structural change in

energy supply chain development in association with carbon emission. This special issue of

the International Journal of Logistics Management (IJLM)on“Impacts of the Belt and Road

Initiative on Global Supply Chains and International Logistics”aims to expand the literature on

the impacts of the BRI on global supply chains and international logistics in tandem with

multimodal transportation. This special issue collected choice papers from two sources: one

from this journal submission site and the other from the 4th Belt and Road Initiative

Conference in association with the 9th Asian Logistics Round Table Conference held in

Bangkok, Thailand, on 1–3 August 2019. The event was co-organized by Chulalongkorn

University in Thailand, Ocean College at Zhejiang University in China, and Jungseok

Research Institute of International Logistics and Trade at Inha University in Korea.

This special issue has four choice papers to meet its theme. In the first paper entitled

“Assessing the mar ket niche of Eurasi an rail freight in th e belt and road era”, Zh ang and

Schramm (2020) assess total logistics costs amongst freight transport modes, i.e. rail, sea,

air and sea/air transport, along the Belt and Road. In doing so, a trade-off model of transit

time and transport costs in tandem with scenario analysis based on cargo type have been

applied from a shipper’s viewpoint, which generates four scenarios with a combination of

cargo value and time sensitivity. One of the findings is that in case of shipping time-

sensitive goods with cargo values ranging from $US1.23/kg to $US10.78/kg, rail transport

mode is cheaper than all the other transport modes, and its total transportation time is much

faster than sea transport mode. Rail transport is an alternative mode for time sensitive

goods, which are average cargo value unnecessarily worth to be transported by air. It

contributes to promoting global supply chains between Asia and Europe and bringing

agility to them. However, in interpreting the preference of rail transport compared to the

other modes, we need to bear in mind the subsidy given by local governments for Chinese

Railway Express (CRE) under the BRI, which has motivated railway platforms in major

cities to attract block train cargoes (Yang et al., 2020). Therefore, we need to keep an eye on

the Chinese government policy on the subsidy for CRE. Zhang and Schramn also provides

readers with valuable information on the CRE, such as major market player, bottlenecks,

and freight and transit time data sources.

In the second paper entitled “The determinants of cargo and eco-efficiencies of global

container shipping companies”, Kuo-Cheng Kuo, Wen-Min Liu, Qian Long Kweh, and

Minh Hieu Le (2020) evaluate cargo and eco-efficiency of global container shipping companies

(CSCs) as well as explore the determinants of the CSCs’efficiencies. It contributes to initiating

the relationship between the business and environmental issues in shipping industry in terms

of efficiency measurement through the data envelop analysis (DEA) from top 10 global CSCs.

Since a container ship at present is getting bigger and bigger with an enormous capacity in

Editorial

725

The International Journal of

Logistics Management

Vol. 31 No. 4, 2020

pp. 725-727

© Emerald Publishing Limited

0957-4093

DOI 10.1108/IJLM-10-2020-367