Missing from the Map: Chinese Exceptionalism, Sovereignty Regimes and the Belt Road Initiative

ABSTRACT

Historical and conventional international relations (IR) frameworks describe the Belt Road Initiative (BRI) as representing a newly ambitious Chinese drive into global politics that positions China as moving away from its long-time reticence towards foreign entanglements. This raises a contradiction of China being at one and the same time both a defender of its own territorial sovereignty while also being engaged in various projects, particularly the BRI and the associated Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), that point in completely different directions. This paper seeks to build upon and move beyond conventional framings to understand how the BRI represents a conflict over the workings of state sovereignty that such frameworks have trouble addressing. We argue that the absence of an official Chinese government BRI map promotes a ‘useful fuzziness’ with regards to China being open to crafting a new as of yet undefined geopolitical identity. In light of the absence of such a map, this work considers key ideas relating to China’s geopolitical expansion via the BRI in terms of so-called sovereignty regimes – the idea that various practices of authority and control emanating originally from states take different geographical shapes. Conflicts arise when a state, such as China, finds itself caught between the operational imperatives of multiple regimes. By identifying the current sovereignty dynamics raised by the BRI in light of the relevant, yet distinctive historical experience of the Marshall Plan, this work can be used as a model for understanding how China’s current leadership is managing the debate of simultaneously protecting ‘strong borders’ yet also promoting a policy of ‘going out’.

Acknowledgments

We wish to thank the following colleagues at the University at Albany, Department of Geography and Planning, for enabling us to dedicate significant time to complete this project: Youqin Huang, Ray Bromley, Catherine Lawson and Andrei Lapenas. We also wish to thank C.K. Lee at UCLA for sharing her insights on the nascent Belt Road Initiative.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.