China's Belt and Road Initiative: at the crossroads of challenges and ambitions

ABSTRACT

Interpretations of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) mostly agree that it is a policy opening that offers some remedies for China's economic and security challenges, as well as reflects China's increasing regional and global ambitions. This paper argues that the multiple drivers characterizing the BRI result from the multiple identities of China as a developing country struggling with several sources of instability and macroeconomic problems and, simultaneously, a regional and an emerging power, and finally a major global power with significant economic capacity to shape the global economic order. The paper aims to substantiate the entanglement of the defensive and ambitious motivations behind the BRI by examining the background against which the Chinese Communist Party leadership has suggested it. In so doing, it draws on Chinese official policy documents and statistics, speeches from Chinese leaders and existing social–scientific research on the transformation of China's economic and political landscape in recent years.

KEYWORDS:

• Belt and Road Initiative
• challenges of China
• ambitions of China
• China
• global economic order

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Erse Kahraman, İbrahim Köremezli, Ali Onur Özçelik, Cenap Çakmak, Müge Dalar and the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable insights and feedback. Any remaining errors are the author's own.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The information on Xi Jinping's visits were compiled from various pieces at Xinhua.net

2. This quotation was taken from the AIIB's second annual meeting website, http://www.aiib2017.org/eng/sub/aiib/about.php. See details of the projects at https://www.aiib.org/en/projects/approved/index.html

3. It is not stated in the plan whether this route will be connected to Bulgaria via the Black Sea or a railway route in Turkey.

4. See the calculation of Wang and Lu (2016, p. 17); see also Wang, Qi, and Zhang (2015, pp. 315–317).

5. See the list of Chinese overseas trade and cooperation zones at the website of the MOFCOM, http://fec.mofcom.gov.cn/article/jwjmhzq/article01.shtml

Additional information

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

Notes on contributors

Veysel Tekdal

Veysel Tekdal is a PhD degree candidate in Area Studies at the Middle East Technical University, Turkey, and a visiting PhD degree student at the School of Public Policy and Management of Tsinghua University. He works as a research assistant at Eskisehir Osmangazi University, Turkey. His research mainly focuses on Chinese politics and the global political economy.