Financing the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI): research agendas beyond the “debt-trap” discourse

ABSTRACT

By way of introduction to the four papers that follow, we chart some key parameters of debate about finance and the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). In particular, we argue that the rise of discourses about “predatory lending” and “debt trap” (that feature in much commentary and reportage about BRI) merits critique and contextualization. The financing needs of BRI also raise important implications for the geography of financial markets and business services in Asia and other key locations in global financial networks. The networked nature of financial centers and the vital role of advanced business services bring into view actors, sites and spaces (such as law firms and offshore centers) that have been neglected by the geopolitical lenses most often applied to analyze BRI.

KEYWORDS:

• Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)
• “debt trap”
• global financial networks
• geopolitics

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the contributions of the panellists and the insightful comments of the audience from the panel on “Financing Belt and Road Initiative” at the First FinGeo Global Conference held at Beijing Normal University, 15–18 September 2019. We also thank Radio Free Asia and Thomas Eder of the Mercator Institute for China Studies for granting us the permission to reproduce Figure 1 and Figure 2, respectively, and the editors of Eurasian Geography and Economics for their feedback and guidance. Shaun Lin also acknowledges the support of the Max Weber Foundation. We are responsible for the interpretations here and any errors.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

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