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Publisher's note: The US-led, rules-based order enables China to pursue a peaceful international power transition by leveraging the agenda-setting power. The agenda that China proposes is development, and the lever to promote the agenda is the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The BRI helps China publicize the development agenda, co-opt the existing US-led system, showcase China’s material success, legitimize its creation of new international institutions, and attract supporters of its calls to revise the current US-led order. Since Washington wants to avoid its competition with China turning apocalyptic, the most sensible US countermeasure is keeping China inside this rules-based order and competing to set its agenda.
Publisher's note: The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is a well-acknowledged central economic and diplomatic policy of the Chinese government, which was proposed by President Xi Jinping in 2013. By using content analysis and interviews, this paper analyzes Chinese President Xi’s speeches from 2013 to 2020 about the BRI, as well as official statements of the Chinese central government. It identifies at least five competing diplomatic narratives of the BRI. Different from repetitive literature that explores either the economic or political implications of the BRI, this paper contributes by exploring the original story that the Chinese government tries to tell the world. It concludes that initially, the narrative of the BRI has not been portrayed well from the Chinese side.
Publisher's note: The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) aims to increase connectivity between regions and countries that market forces excluded from the previous wave of economic globalization. Foreign direct investment (FDI) can create the conditions for the economic takeoff of least-developed countries (LDCs) and developing countries. Although Chinese FDI has nearly doubled since the launch of the BRI in 2013 compared to 2005–2013, it does not seem to be directed toward BRI member countries more than the non-member countries. One exception is South American BRI member countries, which have significantly increased their FDI inflows from China. This is not the case, however, for West Asian countries, where FDI growth has been lower for BRI countries than for the West Asian countries as a whole, and especially for sub-Saharan BRI countries, for which the amount of FDI has even decreased compared to the 2005–2013 period. The BRI’s slow start and the countries’ gradual entry may explain the delay in seeing the positive results expected from it reflected in the data.
Publisher's note: China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), labelled as the world's largest infrastructure program, has so far directed investments mainly to energy and transportation networks in Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. Since its launch, the BRI has changed significantly in terms of scale, stakeholders, and investment sectors and continues to evolve, also in light of the COVID-19 crisis. However, so far, there is no systematic and comprehensive analysis of how it might look like in the medium-term future (2035), even though academic literature on the BRI is burgeoning. We address this research gap and apply a scenario method with a 2 × 2 matrix, building on insights from ∼40 qualitative interviews with representatives from business, non-profit and public sectors from China and BRI countries, complemented by desk research of press and academic articles. We conceptualise the BRI alongside its degree of economic globalisation and multilateralism, which are both impacted by the global pandemic response. We arrive at the four scenarios Asian, Vibrant, Irrelevant, and International BRI. These scenarios show that different development are possible with the BRI's geographical scope, the investment volumes and sectors, the funding structure, and also the orientation towards sustainability. These post-pandemic pathways of the BRI might help decision-makers in business and politics to prepare their responses and strategies. The scenarios can also inform the academic debate around conceptualising the BRI and provide a qualitative basis for future quantitative impact assessments.
Publisher's note: Under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), China and BRI countries mutually benefited from the trade in the economy. Meanwhile, considerable CO2 emissions were embodied in the trade, possibly putting pressure on China's "3060" target of peaking CO2 emissions before 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality by 2060. Yet less is known about the heterogeneous impacts of BRI-induced trade on China, especially at the provincial level. This study quantifies the provincial mismatch of CO2 emissions and economic benefits induced by BRI countries' final demand using the latest linked multiregional input-output model. We found that provinces in China paid around 0.24–7.01 Mt embodied CO2 emissions to obtain per unit billion USD dollars in fulfilling BRI countries' final demand. Regarding the sectoral patterns, embodied CO2 emissions of electricity, gas, and water sector accounted for the largest proportion (more than 50%) for 60% of provinces. Other services sector greatly contributed to each province's economic benefits. We also found that only 15.2% of these embodied CO2 emissions could be mitigated even though upgrading the technology levels of all sectors in backward provinces to China's average level. This indicated that measures relying on the current technology are far from enough for achieving the carbon targets. Therefore, it is urgent to deepen the technology innovation and reform of emission sectors in the short term. In the long run, seeking new long-term pathways of emission reduction, such as optimizing trade structure, is conducive to promoting the sustainable development of BRI and the "3060" realization.
Publisher's note: This study deploys a geoeconomics perspective to explore how the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has been implemented through economic means by states and firms in China and host countries to achieve strategic objectives. We first use three geoeconomic indicators to classify 74 Belt and Road countries' relations with China and unpack the key geographical features of BRI projects. Then, against this geoeconomics background, we select three BRI projects to explain the roles played by the Chinese state and firms with different ownerships in the BRI's execution. The cases are port development in Sri Lanka by China Merchants Port, a national state-owned enterprise; railway investment and construction in Laos and Thailand led by the Chinese government and state-owned firms; and industrial park development by China Fortune Development, a private developer. We argue that the BRI acts as a geoeconomics maneuver, propelled by a close state-business cooperation that is vital in enabling its success. In forging the BRI, the Chinese state shapes the overall strategic pathway. Nonetheless, it is the firms, both state-owned and private, that are increasingly implicated in co-constructing the project-based and context-specific "frameworks of action" with host countries' governments and business interests to manage overseas economic uncertainty.
Publisher’s note: This article seeks to contribute to ongoing debates about the causes and consequences of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). It argues via a neoclassical realist analysis that BRI can be seen as the product of the convergence of Aussenpolitik (foreign policy) and Innenpolitik (domestic politics) factors in China’s grand strategy, specifically enduring desires to balance against American primacy and to secure China’s frontier regions such as the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR). The article concludes that the intersection of these objectives with the geopolitical logic of BRI (i.e. combating American primacy in the maritime domain of the Indo-Pacific through China-led Eurasian integration) provides an explanation for the timing and intensity of Beijing’s imposition of a pervasive ‘security state’ in Xinjiang.
Publisher’s note: China’s massive ‘Belt and Road Initiative’ (BRI) – designed to build infrastructure and coordinate policymaking across Eurasia and eastern Africa – is widely seen as a clearly-defined, top-down ‘grand strategy’, reflecting Beijing’s growing ambition to reshape, or even dominate, regional and international order. This article argues that this view is mistaken. Foregrounding transformations in the Chinese party-state that shape China’s foreign policy-making, it shows that, rather than being a coherent, geopolitically-driven grand strategy, BRI is an extremely loose, indeterminate scheme, driven primarily by competing domestic interests, particularly state capitalist interests, whose struggle for power and resources are already shaping BRI’s design and implementation. This will generate outcomes that often diverge from top leaders’ intentions and may even undermine key foreign policy goals.
Publisher’s note: The ‘Belt and Road’ Initiative features prominently in China’s foreign and geo-economic policies. The aim of this initiative is to strengthen Beijing’s economic leadership through a programme for infrastructure building throughout China’s neighbouring regions. At the same time, this will help Chinese industries at home while they are still modernising. Under this initiative, the Middle East figures prominently due to its rich hydrocarbon resources along with its need to develop its infrastructure in various Persian Gulf nations. Therefore, the current topic is an exploration of the relations between China’s ‘Belt and Road’ Initiative and the Middle East and its broader implications on the region. China is trying to present itself as a plausible alternative to the traditional great power politics at play in the region and with fresh tactics. This ‘Belt and Road’ Initiative is trying to increase China’s economic reach in the Middle East. At the same time, Beijing holds a unique position of being friendly with all the Middle Eastern leaders. Thus, the study will help to understand China’s rising power in the Middle East through its economic prowess and growing military strength. In this regard, it becomes imperative to study China’s progress of ‘Belt and Road’ Initiative in the Middle Eastern region.
Publisher’s note: In starting his announcement of the Belt and Road Initiative in Astana, Kazakhstan, President Xi Jinping was very consciously making the point that the broader vision of BRI was something that drew out of an approach that had been long developing between China and Central Asia. Focused on trying to improve prosperity at home through development and prosperity in adjacent regions, China’s relationship with Central Asia was one which provided a model that Xi saw as a positive way to articulate China’s foreign policy more broadly. Consequently, however, China’s relationship with Central Asia provides a useful window into understanding China’s broader Belt and Road Initiative. In the article, the author lays out a short history of China’s relations with Central Asia, illustrates their current status, before offering seven broader lessons and issues to be found which can provide a useful prism through which to consider the longer-term impact of the Belt and Road Initiative around the world.
Publisher’s note: What does the Belt and Road initiative (BRI) tell us about China’s perceptions of the international order? This paper takes an inductive approach by examining the BRI for a two-pronged purpose: first, to understand China’s perception of the international order by examining Beijing’s official discourse around its intentions and vision for the initiative; and, second, to examine the mechanisms through which Chinese norms are diffused and normalised in Global South states. I find that Chinese policy navigates a dialectical interchange between upholding the existing international order while simultaneously promoting alternative norms and practices to reform parts of the order that are unsatisfactory to Chinese interests. To answer the second part of the puzzle, the paper finds that a central socialisation mechanism in China’s foreign policy for Global South states occurs through professionalisation training programmes. These programmes allow for Chinese expert knowledge and technical know-how to be shared with and mimicked by elites and civil servants across many Global South states.
Publisher’s note: While generally seen as China’s foreign economic initiatives designed to promote regional and global economic cooperation, the One Belt One Road (OBOR) and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) have been launched by Beijing as a grand economic and diplomatic strategy, which is designed and pursued not only to overcome the nation’s domestic economic problems but also to help promote Chinese influence in the region and beyond, weaken the US dominance in the regional and global economy, and minimize the effects of Washington’s policy of containing China. The OBOR and AIIB initiatives will inevitably bring significant impact on the economic architecture in multiple important areas, which would in turn have strategic implications in the region and beyond.
Publisher’s note: This article assesses the role of China’s ‘Belt and Road’ initiative (BRI) in the country’s intended global economic integration. Particular attention is paid to China’s capital penetration of Asian markets, with an empirical assessment of the structure of Asian markets from the perspective of foreign trade, foreign direct investment (FDI) and intergovernmental aid. The success of China’s new opening-up initiative will be largely contingent on Asian markets’ recognition of Chinese products and capital: its trade with potential cooperative countries and its FDI and intergovernmental aid to them fall behind those of the developed countries that are China’s major cooperative partners in/outside Asia. China’s ongoing Asian economic strategy thus faces competition and will need to integrate the BRI into the current framework of international economic cooperation.
Publisher’s note: The Belt and Road initiative is five years old and has resulted in voluminous publications by scholars and policy pundits in many corners of the world. It is by far the most watched foreign policy initiative that the PRC has projected on the world stage. Departing from the standard focus on BRI’s external ambition, this article investigates the political dynamics inside the Chinese state, which has driven and will continue to shape the contour and magnitude of the BRI in the future. The article builds a theory of state fragmentation and argues that the Belt and Road is a mobilization campaign by the Communist leadership in order to deal with domestic and diplomatic challenges. Mobilization, however, intensifies fragmentation and results in the decentralized implementation of the BRI that diverges from the rhetoric of the strategy. Lower-level governments and major business groups leverage on the BRI and devise projects and programs that serve their economic interests. On the one hand, economic growth is being revived in the localities; on the other, restructuring and rebalancing of the Chinese economy are delayed.
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