IE Talks in Tbilisi: The new Silk Road of the XXI Century: from Marco Polo to Xi Jingpin

Join us for an upcoming event in Tbilisi and explore our programs, learn from our professor, and feel IE University spirit on Thursday, May 30, 2024.  

Agenda  

19.00-19.20 Welcome word about IE University by Mariam Katsanashvili, Manager for Central and Eastern Europe, IE University 

19.20 – 20.30 The Geopolitical confrontation between China and the USA: The Silk Road in the XXI century. From Marco Polo to Xi Jinping by Fernando Cortinas 

Historically speaking, “the Silk Road” has been the oldest and most emblematic international trade route in the world. In the 21st century, it is the Chinese initiative to become the hegemonic power on Earth by 2050, displacing the US as leading power. 

At the session we will discuss the past, present and future of the Silk Road. We will describe the “Silk Road” as it was: a physical communication network linking the East and the West in the last 2,600 years ago, mainly by land but also by sea. We will describe its origins, rise, and decline at the end of the Middle Ages. 

We will explore the present and the future of the New Silk Road, embodied by the BRI (“Belt and Road Initiative”):1 trillion US dollars initiative promoted by the Chinese government to develop infrastructure projects (roads, ports, power plants, telecommunication networks) that connect China with the rest of the world. 

Ultimately, "The New Silk Road" is a “wallet-based diplomacy”, the strategy designed by the Chinese government to make China the global leading power by the year 2050, displacing the United States from its current position of leadership. 

Therefore, we will comment on the growing confrontation between China and the USA in different battle fronts: commercial, financial, monetary, technological, reputational, and military, and its impact on the rest of the world, including Asia, Europe, Africa, and Latin America. 

Fernando Cortiñas is an Argentine-Spanish professional with more than 35 years of international work experience in leading multinationals and as a professor in leading academic institutions in Europe and America. 

His professional career has had a double journey, corporate and academic. 

At a corporate level, Fernando's career has been focused mainly on the field of marketing, sales and international business development, which led him to live in Germany, the United States and Spain, working for companies such as Deutsche Babcock, McKinsey, KSB- Itur, Televisión Española and the Telefónica group, where he held managerial and executive positions in several group companies. 

With a strong teaching vocation, at an academic level he has developed an international career spanning more than three decades, with a focus on Marketing and International Business, mainly at the IE Business School (Madrid, Spain), where in 2020 he was awarded the prize for “Best Professor in master’s programs”. 

Polyglot (in addition to being bilingual in Spanish and English, he speaks German, Portuguese and Italian), a tireless reader and traveler, he lives between Madrid and Buenos Aires, and has visited more than a hundred countries around the world. 

20.30-21.30 Networking Cocktail