China’s infrastructure diplomacy in the Mediterranean region under the Belt And Road Initiative: Challenges ahead?

ABSTRACT

As Beijing is actively investing in and constructing infrastructure overseas within the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), numerous rumours and misconceptions have arisen about the changes China can and will bring through its infrastructure diplomacy. By way of an analysis of Chinese infrastructure projects and diplomatic activities in the Mediterranean, examining government documents, companies’ briefings and media reports, we found that China’s infrastructure diplomacy goals are two-fold: 1. to promote infrastructure cooperation and economic ties overseas through political means. 2. to enhance political trust between China and other countries via collaboration in infrastructure development. Despite the preliminary achievements, both China’s economic gains and political influence through infrastructure diplomacy, including in the Mediterranean Region, remain limited. This derives from several factors, the most important of which being China’s predicament in its role-taking, which makes its foreign policies such as the infrastructure diplomacy subject to shifts and open to interpretation.

KEYWORDS:

• China
• Mediterranean
• Belt And Road Initiative
• seaports
• infrastructure
• diplomacy
• geopolitical influence

Acknowledgments

Our special thanks go to the anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions on the article’s earlier version.

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, and the Research Funds of Renmin University of China [21XNF009].