Still a work in progress: the ongoing evolution of the role conception underlying China’s Belt and Road initiative

ABSTRACT

Ten years after its proposition, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has become a cornerstone of China’s foreign policy. It paved the way for China to develop into an active global power shaping global norms and institutions. Applying a role theoretical perspective, the key principles and mechanisms at the heart of the BRI are outlined as well as the dynamic evolution of both the BRI narrative and key contents by highlighting in the Belt and Road Forums of 2017 and 2019. The paper argues that the BRI constitute a unilateral change of China’s role conception for global economic gov7ernance (GEG). This interpretation of the BRI demonstrates that China is now presenting a model for GEG to other countries and that both the contents and the way it is presented continues to evolve. In this regard, a role theoretical reading of the BRI highlights both dynamic as well as pragmatic elements of foreign policy making under Xi Jinping.

摘要

仍在进行中:中国“一带一路”倡议中角色概念的持续演变 Area Development and Policy. “一带一路”倡议提出十年后,已成为中国外交政策的基石。它为中国发展成为一个积极塑造全球规范和制度的全球大国铺平了道路。

本文运用角色理论的视角,通过 2017 年和 2019 年“一带一路”峰会的重点,概述了“一带一路”的核心原则和机制,分析了“一带一路”叙事和关键内容的动态演变。本文认为,“一带一路”倡议是中国在全球经济治理(GE)中角色观念的单方面改变。对“一带一路”的这一解释表明,中国正在向其他国家展示全球经济治理的模式,而且其内容和展示方式都在继续演变。在这方面,对“一带一路”倡议的角色理论解读凸显了习近平外交政策制定的动态和务实因素。

Resumen

Todavía un proyecto en curso: la continua evolución del concepto de roles subyacente en la Nueva Ruta de la Seda. Area Development and Policy. Diez años después de su propuesta, la iniciativa de la Franja y la Ruta (Nueva Ruta de la Seda) se ha convertido en una piedra angular para la política exterior de China. Abonó el terreno para convertir a China en un poder global y activo que define normas e instituciones en todo el mundo.

Adoptamos una perspectiva teórica de roles y destacamos los Foros de la Nueva Ruta de la Seda de 2017 y 2019 para definir los principios y mecanismos clave en el corazón de la Nueva Ruta de la Seda, así como la evolución dinámica de la narrativa de la Nueva Ruta de la Seda y sus contenidos fundamentales.

En este artículo se argumenta que la Nueva Ruta de la Seda constituye un cambio unilateral del concepto de roles de China en la Gobernanza Económica Global (GEG). Esta interpretación de la Nueva Ruta de la Seda demuestra que China está ahora presentando un modelo para la GEG a otros países y que tanto su contenido y el modo en que se presenta continúan en evolución. A este respecto, una lectura teórica del papel de la Nueva Ruta de la Seda pone de relieve la dinámica pero también los elementos pragmáticos de la política exterior bajo el mandato de Xi Jinping.

Аннотация

Работа еще продолжается: продолжающаяся эволюция концепции китайской инициативы “Один пояс, один путь”. Area Development and Policy. Спустя десять лет после запуска инициатива “Один пояс, один путь” (BRI) стала краеугольным камнем внешней политики Китая. Она прокладывает Китаю путь к превращению в активную мировую державу, формирующую глобальные нормы и институты. Применяя теоретико-ролевую перспективу, в статье излагаются ключевые принципы и механизмы, лежащие в основе инициативы, а также динамичная эволюция как описания инициативы, так и ее ключевого содержания на основе форумов “Одного пояса, одного пути” в 2017 и 2019 годах. В статье утверждается, что BRI представляет собой одностороннее изменение концепции роли Китая в глобальном экономическом управлении (GEG). Такая интерпретация BRI демонстрирует, что Китай в настоящее время предлагает новую модель GEG другим странам и что как содержание, так и способ ее представления продолжают развиваться. В связи с этим теоретико-ролевое прочтение инициативы BRI подчеркивает как динамические, так и прагматические элементы формирования внешней политики при Си Цзиньпине.

KEYWORDS:

• China
• Belt and Road Initiative
• foreign policy
• role theory
• narratives
• global economic governance

关键词:

• 中国
• “一带一路”倡议
• 外交政策
• 角色理论
• 叙事
• 全球经济治理。

Palabras clave:

• China
• Nueva Ruta de la Seda
• política exterior
• teoría de roles
• discursos
• gobernanza económica global

Ключевые слова:

• Китай
• инициатива “Один пояс
• один путь”
• внешняя политика
• ролевая теория
• нарративы
• глобальное экономическое управление.

1. INTRODUCTION: CHINA’S RE-EMERGENCE AS A GLOBAL POWER

The re-emergence of China as a leading power is one of the defining characteristics of global politics. Until the leadership of President Xi Jinping, the People’s Republic of China (henceforth China or PRC) played a low-profile role in global affairs (Bersick & Gottwald, 2013, 2015; Gottwald & Duggan, 2011). Around 2009/2010, China’s foreign policy became ‘more caustic and confrontational’ (Shambaugh, 2020, p. 16). From 2021 onwards, under Xi, China has become ‘more globalist’ (Foot, 2014, p. 1087) and has been advancing new concepts for global governance. In the words of former Premier Li Keqiang (2019, p. 16), the PRC ‘has contributed more Chinese ideas to the reform of the global governance system (…)’ and sought to ‘get actively involved in reforming and improving global governance’ (Li, 2019, p. 44). Its 2023 ‘Law on Foreign Relations’ reiterates both the significance of China’s socialist ideology and the ‘purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations’ as the foundation for building ‘a new type of international relations’ (SC of the NPC 2023, pp. 1–2).

This move, from a passive to an increasingly activist role in global affairs, manifests itself in several foreign policy initiatives, most notably the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Ten years after its proposition, the BRI has become a broad narrative containing new areas such as digital connectivity or health policies. As a consequence, the character and underlying objectives of the BRI have been disputed (Leverett & Wu, 2017, pp. 111–112; Omrani, 2021). Official presentations call the BRI a ‘far-reaching strategy with regional and global implications for decades to come’ (Yu, 2017, p. 353). The BRI constitutes an ambitious self-description of how Chinese leaders and policy elites perceive their role in revising the existing regional, trans-regional, and ultimately global order.

There is broad consensus among scholars and practitioners, that China has become much more active in global politics and economics since Xi Jinping came to power. Before, Beijing’s plans and ideas for global institutions and organisations were long considered fragmentary and its plans for reforming global economic governance (GEG) were rather limited. This changed with the introduction of the New Silk Road policies, i.e., the BRI. A closer reading of the BRI therefore reveals core ideas on how the leadership identifies China’s role in global politics in general, and GEG – understood in this paper to be the settlement of global (economic) issues through international rules and norms to maintain international order (Zürn, 2018) – in particular. By adopting a role theory approach to analysing the BRI’s place in China’s wider foreign policy making, it is possible to better understand how both domestic factors and foreign reactions shape China’s policies.

We interpret the BRI as a major contribution to China’s national role conception for GEG. This application of role theory as an approach of foreign policy analysis, faces two major challenges. First, Chinese foreign policy making has been characterised by the centralisation of decision making at the top as well as the competition of different inner-party groups, business, and bureaucratic interests, urging Chinese decision makers to pursue a variety of foreign policies (Duggan, 2019). Thus, while the leadership of the party-state can exert sufficient control to act unitarily on some occasions, it is prone to conflicting actions by diverse groups in other cases. Most observers identify a recentralisation, ideologisation and personalisation of foreign policy making under Xi Jinping (Jacobson & Manuel, 2016, p. 108; Hu, 2019); yet a certain degree of fragmentation has remained (Cabestan, 2017, 2021) and has also been shown in the context of the BRI (Jones & Zeng, 2019). Tsang (2020) aptly describes this new approach as ‘party-state realism’. Second, China’s public discourse on policy issues is heavily censored. While different views and ideas may compete for influence, public and expert debates take place within limits set by the party-state and under the clear dominance of the Communist Party of China (CPC).

In order to explore the change of China’s foreign policies towards GEG, we therefore apply a combination of document analysis and interpretation complemented with expert interviews. The interviews were recorded and anonymised and conducted with academics, policymakers, government officials and think-tank researchers, in Belgium, China, Tanzania, Germany, Morocco, The Netherlands and Taiwan from 2016–2023. We outline the BRI narrative and apply key concepts of role theory to identify the changes in China’s national role conception for GEG. We argue that as part of the BRI the Chinese leadership has started to transport Chinese experience and concepts to the international level of regional and global policies and now claims a leadership role for China in the context of GEG. We then highlight important adaptations in the face of policy reactions by significant others. Despite the overarching position of socialist ideology in Chinese politics under Xi Jinping as epitomised in the foreign relations law (SC of the NPC, 2023, article 3), the BRI has kept a certain degree of pragmatism reminiscent of the earlier era of reform and development.

The paper progresses as follows: we outline briefly the development of the BRI, how it relates to China’s national role conception and why we treat the BRI narrative as the empirical context of our analysis; this shows how China has moved from a traditional national role conception of a hesitant bystander towards a leadership role in the context of GEG. We then identify revisions in the context of the Belt and Road Forums of 2017 and 2019 and interpret these revisions as significant signals regarding China’s foreign policies under Xi Jinping.

1.1 Making sense of the belt and road

Announced in 2013, the ‘21^st Century Maritime Silk Road’ (MSR) initiative and its complementary ‘Silk Road Economic Belt’ (SREB) initiative represent a resuscitation of ancient economic and civilisational ties within and among Asia, Africa, and Europe. Both initiatives have been merged into a strategy under the label of ‘The Belt and Road Initiative’ (Pauls & Gottwald, 2018; Rolland, 2019) and presented as a contribution to ‘the interests of the world community (…) [and] a positive endeavor to seek new models of international cooperation and global governance’ (NDRC, 2015). President Xi (2019a) styles it as ‘new ways for improving global economic governance’.

The origins of the BRI lie in two major policy areas: domestic economic restructuring including regional development in China’s central and western regions and an attempt to reposition China in East Asian and global politics (Du & Ma, 2017; Zhang & James, 2023, pp. 20–23). Due to the BRI’s significance across different policy arenas in China, a new leading group was established chaired by a Vice-Premier and including China’s top foreign policymakers (Rolland, 2019, p. 2; Xinhua, 2022). By January 2021, ‘a total of 171 countries and international organisations had signed 205 cooperation agreements with China’ according to official data (Xinhua, 2021a).

As one of Xi Jinping’s signature foreign policy objectives, the BRI has drawn wide attention within the Chinese foreign-policy community and China-watchers worldwide alike (Hall & Krolikowski, 2022). Concerns have been raised about the BRI as a potential debt trap for participating countries (Brautigam, 2020). Overall, Western states feel disquieted as China increases its security presence in line with its economic expansion (Hillman & Sacks, 2021). However, little detailed and differentiated explanation has been provided as to how and why the BRI impacts on China’s policies with regard to the reform of GEC and China’s changing role in GEG.

The existing academic literature predominantly discusses the BRI as a geopolitical and economic strategy (Clarke, 2018; Wang, 2016) and examines its effects on global or regional order (Callaghan, 2016; Nordin & Weissmann, 2018) including its effects on global governance in general (Hameri & Jones, 2018; Zhang, 2017, 2017; Zhao, 2019) with some interest in the process of reforming GEG (Drysdale et al., 2017; Paradise, 2019). Some early interpretations describe it as a predominantly (trans-)regional model for a new form of cooperation (Liu & Dunford, 2016). It has been discussed as an initiative ‘that China itself has proposed for innovative and better global governance’ (He, 2019, p. 471) as part of the leadership’s ambition to define ‘China as a normative power’ (Callaghan, 2016, p. 227) and as a ‘China-led initiative to complementing the existing global governance system’ (CCIEE & UNDP, 2017, p. 44).

The BRI has contributed to the creation of multilateral development banks (MDBs) to facilitate the planned investment of between US$1 trillion and US$8 trillion (Larsen, 2019) including the China-centric Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), the Silk Road Fund (SRF) and the BRICS-created New Development Bank (NDB) (Callaghan & Hubbard, 2016; Sun, 2016; Xu, 2019a, 2019b). In the academic literature, the AIIB and the SRF are often treated as functions of the BRI (Xie, 2022; Xu, 2019c) and as a challenge to the rules and norms of the existing GEG system (Benabdallah, 2019; Callaghan, 2016; Zhang & James, 2023). They underscore ‘that China is now starting to take on a leadership role to reflect its position as a rising global power’ (Hong, 2017, p. 354).

In order to add explanatory clarity to the study of the BRI we treat the emerging BRI narrative, its evolution and change, as the empirical context for analysing China’s concept of its role in GEG, i.e., its national role conception.

1.2. Narratives, the BRI and China’s national role conception

Linking domestic concepts and ideas with patterns of foreign policy behaviour in a changing international structure is a distinct element of role theory (Breuning, 2019; Harnisch, 2011). Roles are social positions resulting from interdependent patterns of behaviour, turning ‘roles’ and ‘role conceptions’ into dynamic concepts constituting ongoing processes of ontological re-assurance and policy revisions. Changes in the social structure, in the expectations of significant domestic and external others, or in the mindset of the ruling elite trigger the contestation and eventual revision of role conceptions. Once these concepts are enacted, role taking by one state needs to be matched by complementary role taking by other states. Unilateral revisions of role conceptions and their enactments can spark role conflicts and thus affect both foreign policies and international relations. Yet, roles require a specific (national) role conception and the capacity and willingness of role implementation. The normative and political underpinnings of roles, the ‘national role conceptions’ (NRCs) express what China’s ‘standard’ behaviour should be in each situation. NRCs are embedded in narratives about the historical self and provide ontological security (Harnisch et al., 2016).

Several ‘organised’ or ‘specific’ others – domestic and external – express different expectations regarding the roles a state should take and thus contribute to the revision of NRCs. Even in a non-pluralist polity such as China’s, certain public and numerous bureaucratic, expert, and inner-party actors constitute important forces in this process of reconceptualising role conceptions – albeit within the limits set by the CPC’s ‘party-state realism’ and censorship. Foreign policy making involves a certain degree of competition between think tanks, individual experts, and vested interests inside the party-state (Jones, 2017). Linking these internal processes with changes at the international level and expectations by foreign actors makes role theory a valuable framework for a deeper understanding of foreign policy actions and their impact on regional and global governance regimes. Role theory thus provides an alternative venue for the interpretation of foreign policy action beyond the external definition of ‘interests’ or a general construction of identities. In this understanding, changes to China’s NRC, and thus to the role China enacts in the context of the BRI, originate in changes in the international environment, the contestation by foreign or domestic demands, or modifications in the leadership’s ideas and interests. These concepts and enactments affect China’s domestic constellation as well as the external environment. They trigger a process of change which also includes the revision of the NRC. The BRI can thus be analytically treated as an expression and conceptualisation of China’s NRC in the area of GEG which is subject to reactions by significant others and thus continuously under pressure to evolve further.

Role theory produces interpretative knowledge rather than causal explanations (Wehner & Thies, 2014). Following Aggestam (2018, p. 88) we apply an ‘inductive empirical analysis (…) in order to reveal how policy makers themselves perceive and define roles’. This interpretive approach, a qualitative methodological framework, ‘offers the use of narratives to role theory, which are deployed by those speaking on behalf of the state to identify NRCs that speak to both new dilemmas and traditions’ (Wehner & Thies, 2014, p. 413). ‘[N]arratives are thus understood as strategies constructed by political agents that speak on behalf of the state, in internal and external relations, to frame and cast roles and achieve specific goals and interests’ (Wehner & Thies, 2014, p. 421). To understand a nation’s international role, the narrative of that role needs to be clearly presented in the discourse of a state around a particular event or process. The construction of the BRI narrative clearly constitutes such a process. To identify and analyse the narrative and resulting changes to the NRC, we incorporate different sources from different points of view into our discussion of the BRI: speech acts conducted by top state officials, official documents, press declarations, public speeches, and series of semi-structured interviews. On this basis, we identify and interpret the process of the contestation of China’s NRC through the BRI as a Chinese ‘road map’ (Aggestam, 2018, p. 82) for the reforming GEG.

2. THE BRI AND THE EVOLUTION OF CHINA’S NATIONAL ROLE CONCEPTION

2.1. The traditional national role conception: China as a hesitant bystander

The BRI is just the latest step in a long evolution of governments of China defining their international role in reaching back to the Bretton Woods Conference of 1944 (Franczak, 2017, p. 112). With the foundation of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949, China was initially shunned by most Western nations in the context of global governance in the 1960s and 1970s (Solinger, 2001, pp. 178–179). Following the PRC’s takeover of the Chinese seat in the UN Security Council in 1971, China joined the IMF and the World Bank in 1980. It acted as a newcomer and rule-taker, after years of isolation linking itself up with a well-established set of norms, ideas, and policies. At the same time, the study of global governance slowly gained traction with Chinese International Relations’ scholars (Pang & Wang, 2013, p. 1191). This followed the foreign policy paradigm of China’s paramount leader Deng Xiaoping to prioritise domestic development. In so doing, China kept a low profile in international affairs and sought to benefit from the international environment (Gottwald & Duggan, 2011). The Global Financial Crisis (GFC) of 2007–2008 sparked a global debate regarding both the structure and the underlying principles of GEG (Boughton et al., 2017). To high-ranking Chinese officials reform of the global economic and financial system became a key issue as part of the overall transformation of the international system (Lu, 2011, p. 90). China took a more proactive approach in tackling the Eurozone sovereign debt crisis and IMF reform (Bersick & Gottwald, 2013).

In this context, China’s existing NRC was heavily contested, both domestically and by foreign expectations (Gottwald, 2016). The difficulties China encountered in gaining a better position within the international economic system, however, revealed that the willingness of significant other states, such as the US, to accept China’s more proactive role depended heavily on the urgency of a given crisis (Li, 2015). But limited by their lack of expertise and capacity, Chinese officials did not develop an alternative vision (Huang, 2015, pp. 51–52). Voices calling for a more assertive policy grew more explicit (Xi, 2017). Under Hu Jintao, the General Secretary of the CPC from 2002 to 2012, the revision of China’s NRC emphasised democratisation of international relations, development, inclusiveness, and respect for different developmental models, highlighting that China’s stance should be ‘strongly shaped by its association with developing countries’ (Wang, 2011, p. 1). China at that point advocated for a collective order to be constructed around the interests of other states and the common interest. Yet, with Xi Jinping taking office in 2013, the revision of China’s NRC gained speed, urgency, and depth. Several new concepts and slogans were introduced, and the idea of creating the BRI finally emerged as a key narrative.

2.2. The Belt and Road Initiative: China redefines global economic governance

After Xi Jinping taking up office as General Secretary of the CPC in 2012, the BRI soon emerged as China’s most high-level and most far-reaching initiative in China’s foreign policy (Wang, 2017b). It constitutes an explicit Chinese proposal for global governance (Li, 2017; Wang, 2017). The first strategy document for the BRI was produced by two members of China’s diplomatic service, Zhang Hanhui and Le Yucheng. The original idea of ‘economic belts’ derived from Chinese domestic economic policies. The Silk Roads were thus initially presented as an add-on to new ways of cooperating in regional and economic policy making (Li, 2014, p. 2015). It took two years for the BRI to become an official policy in a joint document produced by the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the Ministry of Commerce, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (National Development and Reform Commission [NDRC], 2015). In 2017, the BRI became part of the constitution of the CPC (CPC, 2017, p. 7) and was internationally presented as a manifestation of leadership ‘in global governance and international cooperation’ (Wang, 2017b).

With the declaration of the BRI as a core party policy, the scope for taking different approaches to define China’s role within this narrative became limited, despite the prolific academic and public discourse. It created a distinctive narrative about China’s role as a leader and great power within the context of the existing international order. The official narrative is deeply ‘rooted in the Silk Road spirit of peace, cooperation, openness, inclusiveness, mutual learning, and mutual benefit’ (Yang, 2017). It is presented as an ‘open, inclusive, interconnected and innovative’ approach (Li, 2017) that seeks to incorporate the perceptions of at least the key countries along the BRI into China’s geo-policy (Yang, 2015, pp. 19–20). It enables China to push for strategic partnerships, free trade areas, cultural exchanges, and large-scale investment projects (Yang, 2015, pp. 20–21). In its early configurations, the BRI was directed at closer cooperation especially between China’s western regions and neighbouring countries as well as between coastal areas and the maritime road. In other words, the BRI initially offered a Chinese proposal on how to revise regional economic governance as part of ‘neighbour policies’. Its significance for China’s NRC for global politics was deliberately left open. Even at the 2016 G20 Summit in Hangzhou, Xi Jinping and the Chinese leadership kept the BRI off the official documents yet managed to feed Chinese domestic (economic) concepts into the programme of the G20 (Caspari & Gottwald, 2020; Duggan & Ladines Azalia, 2020).

By the time of the first Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation (BRF) in 2017 the BRI had evolved slowly into a broader concept. It then included a concept for cooperation with and among foreign countries and a platform for developing nations to support their development by creating an open global economy as expressed in the BRI’s key mechanisms and principles (see Table 1). The evolution of the BRI has created mechanisms and principles for China’s new foreign policies. It shapes the new narrative of China’s role and signals China’s NRC.

Table 1. Key principles and mechanisms of the BRI concept.

Key Principles	Conceptualisation	Examples of Policy Output	Contribution to China’s New NRC
A) Extensive consultation: From a Chinese proposal to a global consensus	1) Building international platforms for extensive consultation 2) Strengthening the role of multilateral mechanisms in extensive consultation 3) Establishing a tracktwo mechanism for dialogue	Silk Road International Exposition and the Investment and Trade Forum Actively engages in substantive coordination and cooperation with bodies, such as: G20, APEC, SCO, China-ASEAN (10+1), FOCAC, China-Arab States Cooperation Forum, China-CELAC Forum, China-CEEC (16+1) Silk Road Think Tank Association and University Alliance of the Silk Road	China as standard setter and facilitator in a global system of multi-layered multilateralism with China at its centre
B) Joint contribution: Joining forces to build a harmonious international community	1) Building financing platforms for cooperation 2) Actively conducting cooperation in third-party markets	AIIB Silk Road Fund China-Kazakhstan Industrial Capacity Cooperation Fund MoU with the UN Economic Commission for Europe	– Taking responsibility for funding development projects – Enacting financial leadership
C) Shared benefits: Ensuring all parties gain real benefits	1) Bringing China’s development achievements to other BRI countries 2) Improving people’s wellbeing in other BRI countries 3) Facilitating the transfer of scientific and technological innovations to other BRI countries. 4) Promoting green development	Programme for China-Africa Cooperation on Poverty Reduction Five regional platforms for technological transfer with ASEAN, South Asia, Arab States, Central Asia, and Central and Eastern Europe Alliance of International Science Organizations MoU on building green Belt and Road with the UN Environment Program, Belt and Road Ecological and Environmental Cooperation Plan	China as a de facto role model – Standard setting across the BRI in areas such as technological education and environment
D) Vision: Building a global community of shared future	1) Proposed by China but belonging to the whole world. 2) Offering a Chinese approach to reforming the current global governance system. 3) Binding together BRI countries to share a common future.	The BRI policy focuses on mutual complementarity and mutual benefit among countries at different levels of economic development The BRI policy focuses on improving conditions and creating opportunities for development, strengthening the drive for development, and sharing the fruits of development The BRI propels the interaction between global governance, security, and development – an attempt to provide an alternative solution to these issues The BRI concept of a global community of shared future involves combining interests and sharing the benefits of development	– Promotion of equality among nations in global governance – Strong voice for developing states on developmental issues – Moving from regional and inter-regional to trans-continental and global

Source: BRI LG (Office of the Leading Group for Promoting the Belt and Road) (2019).

2.3. Key mechanisms and principles of the BRI

The BRI integrates various key concepts developed within the Chinese policy elite and endorsed by its ultimate leadership. According to the official programme, ‘the Belt and Road Initiative is in line with the purposes and principles of the UN Charter. It upholds the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence: mutual respect for each other’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, mutual non-aggression, mutual non-interference in each other’s internal affairs, equality and mutual benefit, and peaceful coexistence’ (Xinhua, 2018). The BRI is ‘open for cooperation (…), harmonious and inclusive (…), follows market operation (…), and seeks mutual benefit’ (Xinhua, 2018). The key mechanisms are defined as ‘policy coordination’, ‘facilities connectivities’, ‘unimpeded trade’, ‘financial integration’ and ‘people to people bonds’ (NDRC, 2015). Its underlying rationale includes the key objectives of creating a community of shared future, a community of shared benefits, and a community of shared responsibility – the ‘holy trinity of new thinking’ (Zhang, 2017) of China’s leadership. The BRI narrative thus focuses on issues of fairness, cooperation, and overcoming the deficits of the previous world order based on Western norms and interests (Ma, 2017). Wang Yiwei interprets the guiding principles of the BRI as ‘of, by, and for all’: ‘[i]t is built of all (with wide consultation; a community of common interests); built by all (from joint contributions; a community of common responsibility); and built for all (benefits are shared; a community of common destiny/shared future)’ (Wang, 2017b). He emphasises the contrast with ‘Western colonialism, imperialism and hegemony, which emphasized international looting and competition, rather than co-operation or compromise’ (Wang, 2017b).

One key element of global decision making as enshrined in the BRI is comprehensive consultation. The BRI ‘should be jointly built through consultation to meet the interests of all’ (Xinhua, 2018), a key principle in Chinese domestic as well as foreign policymaking. Another set of principles introduced in the BRI are the ‘Five Connections’ (Xinhua, 2018) of politics, trade, capital, construction, and people (Wang, 2018, p. 4). Those principles are expected to foster the complementary strengths of the participating countries (Wang, 2017a) and provide a ‘necessary precondition’ (Jia, 2017) for the BRI’s ‘corollary’ (Rolland, 2019, p. 2), the community with a shared future for mankind.

Outlined in Table 1 are key principles and mechanisms constituted by the BRI, such as extensive consultation, joint contribution, shared benefits, and building a community of shared future for humankind. These principles and mechanisms represent the BRI’s normative-institutional regime and highlight how China projects itself into a leading power that seeks to establish new norms and new forms of cooperation and exchange in geopolitics and geoeconomics. As these mechanisms are formed based on China’s domestic polity the Chinese model of development is portrayed by developing countries as a model to follow (Duggan, 2020) – despite the fact that the Chinese leadership consistently highlights that countries should follow their own path to development.¹ The two principles of ‘shared benefits’ and ‘building a global community of shared future for mankind’, have a major effect on how China understands and redefines its role in GEG. These principles require the effects of the BRI to produce mutual benefits, therefore creating a need for a stronger voice for developing states on developmental issues. This can be seen within the structure of the AIIB where developing states are given more weight compared to other development banks such as the World Bank (AIIB, 2020). The principle of ‘building a global community of shared future for humankind’ has increased the scope of the BRI from trans-continental to global: it now includes projects in Latin American and the Caribbean (Malena, 2019) clearly outside the early scope of China’s neighbour policy. While the BRI narrative thus incorporates a leadership role for China, the form of this leadership role here refers to providing platforms for developing joint projects and facilitating projects rather than offering hegemonic leadership.

The principles and mechanisms introduced through the BRI thus define a new role conception for China in GEG. Changing one’s role conception and seeking to implement it, however, requires the adaptation of existing role conceptions and enacted roles by others. The tensions created by unilateral role change were highlighted at the Belt and Road Forums of 2017 and 2019.

2.4. The challenge of unilateral role change: the BRF 2017 and 2019

The geopolitical and geoeconomic scope of the BRI was underscored by the first Belt and Road Forum (BRF) in 2017. It created a broad transnational network of think tanks, businesses, institutions of higher education, and other societal actors. It triggered the foundation of numerous platforms and events to discuss and coordinate policies and projects as part of the BRI. The BRF thus marked a step towards the formation of an alternative structure for global cooperation and aimed at further expanding China’s initiative (Chen & Tian, 2017, p. 8).

Yet, in stark contrast with this claim, European demands to include the principle of fairness into the BRF Declaration led to a diplomatic confrontation and the demands were rejected.² According to a high-level EU diplomat the EU had ‘made [it] clear that, for Europe, the Belt and Road initiative can only be a success if it’s based on transparency and co-ownership’ (Phillips, 2017). Instead of endorsing the BRI, the EU emphasised the need to rather fully exploit existing multilateral frameworks, like the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM; Bersick, 2020). Similarly, criticism regarding Chinese investments and China’s strategy of securing leadership in key technologies – the de facto incorporation of the Made in China 2025 into the BRI – do not match the BRI narrative regarding a new form of cooperation. They have rather triggered accusations of debt colonialism which are rejected by leading Chinese scholars (Rolland, 2018; Wang, 2017a, 2018). Lending policies were later revised around the second BRF in 2019 (see below). Debt-problems in some of the BRI countries have been explained by geopolitical origins of the BRI and the lack of understanding of the new markets on the side of Chinese actors (Huang, 2015, p. 53; Liao, 2021). While governments are required to contribute important safeguards, the success and commercial benefit of BRI-related projects rest with enterprises rather than governments (Huang, 2017; Jones & Hameiri, 2020). Yet it is the top-down planning and the joint development of economic policies by the involved countries that are supposedly the hallmarks of this new form of GEG. This new co-operational and relational approach in China’s NRC draws upon Chinese traditional cultural values (Dessein, 2015). It aims at benefitting both the Chinese people and the countries involved (Chen et al., 2017, p. 21).

This interpretation of the BRI emphasises yet another traditional CPC policy paradigm: respect for the individual circumstances of countries and regions involved. Based on this mutual respect, the BRI is presented as a step towards building a new global order linking the BRI perspectively with bi- and multilateral free trade agreements and multilateral projects like the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) or the proposed Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific (FTAAP; Chen et al., 2017, p. 27). This new global system for economic cooperation would then enable each BRI country to define a territory to domestically establish special free trade zones following the examples of the free trade zones in China (Chen et al., 2017, p. 32). By 2023 each of China’s 21 free trade zones develops its own characteristics, and along with other specialised zones facilitate cross-border trade and exchanges in the context of the BRI (Xinhua, 2023). This proposal for a transregional system of interconnected FTAs once more highlights how the BRI incorporates ideas about a revised form of GEG drawn from the experience of China’s reform policies. The jointly established BRI free trade zones can well be in line with WTO regulation, but aim at deeper integration (Chen et al., 2017, p. 32). The envisaged system of FTAs needs to be matched by a ‘BRI capital network system’ (Chen et al., 2017, p. 34) based on the cooperation of the various old and new multilateral development banks with national development and policy banks to provide the necessary long-term support for the BRI.³ ‘Silk Road bonds’ should be globally marketed, and similar networks should be created in other sectors such as energy. This should further lead to a better coordination of macroeconomic policies among the BRI countries thus contribute to a better global economy (Chen et al., 2017, p. 37) and to a new form of GEG. Here, the BRI thus plays a decisive role.

The BRI is designed as the centre of a web of Chinese bilateral and regional agreements allowing China to correlate policy across different agreements without members needing to agree to broad themes or set of norms as it is the case in the traditional form of GEG. Rather than broad themes the BRI would focus on micro bottom-up issues which can be linked across agreements (Huang, 2019). This approach is based on China’s own domestic experience of economic development since the 1980s. The BRI offers states a new choice namely to follow the Chinese example (Chen, 2017, p. 18). The underlying normative-institutional regime (see Table 1) of the BRI thereby seeks to transport various Chinese norms and concepts into political and economic relations with and among a vast number of countries. Stressing ‘mutual learning and mutual reflection’ (Xi, 2017), the BRI has become a ‘China Plan’ for global governance (Bai et al., 2017). Xi Jinping accordingly calls for global reforms based on the key principles of equality, openness, transparency, and inclusiveness (Xi, 2019) while promoting alternative interpretations of key norms such as a dialectical interpretation of human rights which are universal yet restricted by local and civilisational conditions (SC of the NPC 2023, article 22). The Chinese experience in domestic reforms thus becomes a ‘China Solution’ designed to also foster economic development in economies other than the Chinese – despite the emphasis on the individual circumstances of each country and each civilisation in China’s foreign policy documents.

The second BRF in 2019 saw the participation of 150 countries. After the 2017 BRF, several studies (for example, Hurley et al., 2018) had accused the BRI of raising the risk of unsustainable indebtedness in some of the countries, which others considered to be ‘overstated or mischaracterized’ (Brautigam, 2019, 2020). Some governments of participating countries sought renegotiation or even the cancellation of BRI projects and the BRI was critically debated in China (Schrader, 2018). These developments became a risk for China (Huang, 2019) and Beijing responded to these criticisms. The official BRI narrative shifted to emphasising the BRI’s open invitation character, green and sustainable investment, and ‘clean cooperation’ where ‘everything should be done in a transparent way’. According to Xi Jinping: ‘The BRI is an open platform for cooperation. It is guided by the principle of consultation and collaboration for shared benefits. It is not designed to serve any hidden geopolitical agenda (…) It is not an exclusive club that is closed to non-members, nor is it a ‘trap’ as some people have labelled it. Rather, the BRI is a major and transparent initiative with which China shares opportunities and pursues common development with the rest of the world (Xi, 2019).

By reacting to its critics, China managed to adapt the BRI narrative without compromising the underlying normative-institutional regime. The BRI was further portrayed as a platform where China exerts leadership predominantly through guidance and the facilitation of a framework for cooperation among equals.⁴ The Office of the Leading Group for Promoting the Belt and Road Initiative (2019) summed up the state of the BRI. As outlined in Table 1, the report on the BRI connects several key principles with mechanisms and policy outcomes. This is part of the Chinese party-state’s attempt to place diverse activities within the official BRI narrative and to integrate existing and new forums and organisations into the revised BRI concept. It thus consolidates the attempt under Xi Jinping to change China’s global role and to claim a new and stronger status by promoting a set of rules, norms and mechanisms, allowing for a greater participation of developing states in the international order and developing projects and institutions in a new way based on mutual recognition of the equality of developmental models and individual circumstances.

2.5. The challenge of unilateral role change: external expectations

Acknowledging the extensive criticisms and pushback from major partners both within Asia, in Europe and by the US, China started to adapt its conceptualisation of the BRI (see Table 2). Their pushback triggered a certain adaptation in the BRI narrative and thus in China’s NRC.

Table 2. 1st Belt and Road Forum 2017 and 2nd Belt and Road Forum 2019.

	1^st Belt and Road Forum 2017	2^nd Belt and Road Forum 2019
Principles	Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence Open to all countries, and international and regional organisations Mutual respect for civilisations, paths and modes of development Seeking common ground while shelving differences Market operation, mutual benefit, conjunction of interests	Equal footing: Honouring UN Charter and international law Mutual benefit: Seeking convergence of interests and the broadest common ground for cooperation, Harmony and inclusiveness: Acknowledging diversity Market-based operation: Recognising the role of the market Balance and sustainability in all areas
Framework	Promotes practical cooperation in all fields, and works to build a community of shared interests Ambitious economic vision of the opening-up Further enhance trade and investment facilitation, establish a network of free trade areas	Building closer collaboration partnerships (N-N, S-S, triangular) Expanding economic growth, trade and investment Level-playing field market rules, universally recognised norms. Strengthening physical, institutional, and people-to-people connectivity Expand people-to-people exchanges, promote peace, justice, social cohesion, inclusiveness, democracy, good governance, the rule of law, human rights, gender equality and women empowerment Urgent action on climate change Involvement of governments, int. and reg. organisations, the private sector, civil society, and citizens
Cooperation Priorities	Policy coordination: intergovernmental cooperation, multi-level intergovernmental macro policy exchange, expand shared interests, enhance mutual political trust, and reach new cooperation consensus Facilities connectivity: Facilities connectivity is a priority area for improving road network, land-water transportation, aviation infrastructure, energy infrastructure, Information Silk Road Unimpeded trade: enhance customs cooperation such as information exchange, mutual recognition of regulations, and mutual assistance in law enforcement Financial integration: currency stability system, investment and financing system and credit information system. bilateral currency swap, cooperation in bilateral financial regulation, build a regional financial risk early-warning system. People-to-people bond: extensive cultural and academic exchanges, tourism programme, Sports exchanges, cooperation epidemic information sharing, address public health emergencies, cooperation in science and technology.	Pursuing dialogue and consultation in order to build synergies in development strategies. Conducting in-depth consultation on macroeconomic issues by optimising the existing multilateral and bilateral cooperation and dialogue mechanisms. Strengthening cooperation on innovation, by supporting innovation action plans for e-commerce, digital economy, smart cities and science and technology parks Promoting practical cooperation on roads, railways, ports, maritime and inland water transport, aviation, energy pipelines, electricity, fibre optic including trans-oceanic cable, telecommunications and information and communication technology. Maximising synergies in infrastructure planning and development Deepening economic and trade cooperation; upholding the authority and effectiveness of the multilateral trading system, Expanding trade by nurturing new areas of trade growth Advancing global value chains development and supply chain connectivity, Protection of the environment, biodiversity, of natural resources Streamlining the process of customs clearance Jointly working on a long-term, stable and sustainable financing system. Promoting people-to-people exchange (education, science, technology, sport, health, think-tank, media) Encouraging dialogues among civilisations,
Cooperation Mechanisms	No shadow global governance: China will take full advantage of the existing bilateral and multilateral cooperation mechanisms to push forward the building of the Belt and Road and to promote the development of regional cooperation. Constructive role of the international forums and exhibitions at regional and sub-regional levels	Joint endeavour seeking complementarities with other connectivity initiatives provide new opportunities, new impetus Promoting peace, mutually beneficial cooperation

Source: BRI LG (Office of the Leading Group for Promoting the Belt and Road) (2020).

The slightly revised principles now particularly emphasise the ‘green’ objectives of the BRI and China considered criticisms regarding the impact of the Chinese global energy investments strategy on dealing with climate change. Similarly, the Chinese leadership sought to present BRI projects as more open and more transparent reflecting the debate on ‘debt trap diplomacy’. China has reduced its financial support and investments into the BRI countries and has informed major state-controlled and state-owned banks to act with more prudence. In addition, more steps have been taken by Chinese leadership including the development of dispute settlement mechanisms. Facing a backlash by the United States, Europe, Japan and their partners who have all subsequently announced alternative programmes, China held an alternative forum instead of a third BRF in 2021, i.e., the Asia-Pacific High-level Conference on Belt and Road Cooperation, under the conditions of the global Covid-19 pandemic. Underscoring the Asia-Pacific significance of the BRI signals another shift: this time, back to China’s neighbourhood. Ironically, in the early stages of the BRI, it was not specified whether the BRI would become part of China’s neighbourhood diplomacy or the other way round. Now, while expanding the scope of BRI projects to Latin America, the Chinese leadership is re-emphasising regionalisation.

Consolidating the policy shift of the 2019 BRF, Xi Jinping highlighted the need to prepare Chinese companies and organisations better for working in BRI countries and improve oversight over Chinese investments (Xinhua, 2019). He acknowledged the ‘difficult international environment’ and continued to stress the significance of the Asia-Pacific (Xinhua, 2021b). At the second BRF, China is underscoring the need for ‘high-quality’ cooperation and development (Xi, 2019) which have since become standard attributes to the BRI. Following calls for dealing more transparently with foreign debt accumulated in the context of the BRI, China intensified its dialogue with the Paris Club without becoming a member (Economist, 2022). This allows China to benefit from foreign experience and existing mechanisms without officially undermining its claim to propose alternative principles and mechanisms in the context of the BRI. In the uprun to the 20^th Party Congress in Beijing in October 2022, the presentation of the BRI to international audiences changed further, now strongly emphasising co-operations and partnerships (Brinza, 2022). In Xi Jinping’s report to the 20^th Party Congress in October 2022, the BRI is linked with the idea of providing an international platform and emphasising high-quality development (Xi, 2022, pp. 8, 27).

3. CONCLUSION

Ten years after its first presentation, the BRI continues to evolve. The BRI has increased China’s investment abroad as well as the level of Chinese production overseas. The scale and ambition of the BRI in terms of investment and production requires China to integrate its economy deeper into the global economy in order to secure these international assets. This process is driven in part by domestic expectations of further economic development. As an official narrative, the BRI communicates to the world the return of China as a great power that offers an alternative concept for GEG. The BRI thereby clearly signals a Chinese role change in global policies: Beijing is ready to lead. Hiding its capacities and ambitions is no longer the dominant policy paradigm. Closely linked with various further initiatives presented by China’s leadership with Xi Jinping at its core, the BRI presents important elements of China’s new role conception for China’s position in GEG: Creating a new form of international relations on a platform for ‘democratic’, ‘fair’ and ‘joint’ negotiations of new projects and mechanisms between developing and developed nations.

Consequently, the BRI highlights a major shift in Chinese foreign policy thinking, which can be observed and condensed in the analytical concept of its national role conception. A closer look at the principles and mechanisms proposed in the context of the BRI thus reveals both the content of China’s revised NRC – and the limits to its effort at unilaterally changing its role in global politics. Faced with countermeasures, the BRI started to increase the emphasis on green and sustainable projects and sought to address issues around its funding of BRI projects. The process of revising its NRC was less smooth than one might expect in an authoritarian system with a pre-eminent leader and given the reactions of important others like the US or the EU. While some countries quickly accepted Chinese financial support, major actors – including Japan, South Korea, the US, and the EU – have taken a more distanced view. The Chinese leadership has acknowledged that its BRI concept and proposals are not universally met and reacted by adopting and rearranging policies.

Identifying these adaptations, both policies and key principles of the BRI deserve to be studied in their political and ideological context. Shifting emphasis on issues of sustainability or transparency between the first and second Belt and Road Forum stress the element of pragmatic flexibility in China’s foreign policy. In this regard, the idea of the BRI as a platform – which includes networks of bilateral, multilateral, regional, and transregional forms of cooperation – is re-characterised as a new network of GEG through the growth of bottom-up cooperation and multilateral formats based on norms and principles proposed by the Chinese leadership and originating from China’s domestic policies. The BRI thus brings to the fore a dialectic emphasis of the specific domestic conditions in each country, on the one hand, and Chinese principles and mechanisms for organising development and cooperation outside China, on the other hand.

The BRI is aimed at making China a global leader yet important countries have not followed this leadership claim. They came up with responses and countermeasures – and China has gradually adapted its NRC. The evolution of the BRI thus confirms one of the basic tenets of role theory in foreign policy analysis: one cannot unilaterally change one’s role. The ongoing adaptation of the BRI itself and of its position within China’s broader foreign policy and global governance strategy contrasts the dominating picture of foreign policy making under Xi Jinping as highly centralised and, more or less, monolithic. Pragmatism and the need to adapt to circumstances as well as important others have not lost their significance for foreign policy making in China.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Anonymised background interviews in Brussels, Dar es Salaam, and Ribāṭ,

2. Anonymised background interviews with representatives from the European Commission and their advisors in Amsterdam, Berlin, Shanghai and Taipei.

3. Anonymised background interviews in Berlin and Shanghai.

4. Anonymised background interview, Brussels.