This volume offers a bottom-up view of transborder informal exchanges
across Asia and Eurasia and analyses their contention with the stateorchestrated
One Belt One Road initiative. We argue that informal connectivity
has a distinct logic and set of rules in terms of its organization,
operation, and transactions. It constitutes a third way of globalization,
alongside market-driven neoliberalism and state-led regionalism. The
three modes of globalization differ in terms of the nature of actors, types
of activities, rules of exchange, roles of the state, and major risks involved.
Their clash and mesh prompt us to rethink the agency of global expansion,
the nature of world city networks, and the linkage to the global value chain.
Globalisation of Islamic Financial Services and World City Networks