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

Lai, Karen P. Y.; Lin, Shaun; Sidaway, James D.

doi:10.1080/15387216.2020.1726787

Cited by 96 publications

(39 citation statements)

References 45 publications

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“…Policies are formulated, finance is mobilized, and projects are implemented in specific places – sites of struggle that must be analyzed to better understand the broader implications of the BRI. This methodological orientation sets our collection alongside recent advancements in political geography literature that “ground” China's global integration in socio-material co-constructions and discursive particularities ( Klinger & Muldavin, 2019 ; Sidaway, Rowedder, Woon, Lin, & Pholsena, 2020 ), revealing the globally networked nature of its finance ( Lai, Lin, & Sidaway, 2020 ), the “fuzziness” of the BRI's nature and contours ( Narins & Agnew, 2020 ), and the locally specific processes of “muddling through” that produce China's borders and cross-border engagements ( Woodworth & Joniak-Lüthi, 2020 ).…”

Section: Theoretical Insights From Critical Methodologiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

China’s Belt and Road Initiative: Views from the ground

Oliveira

Murton

Rippa

et al. 2020

Political Geography

120

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The Chinese government promotes the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) as a global strategy for regional integration and infrastructure investment. With a projected US$1 trillion commitment from Chinese financial institutions, and at least 138 countries participating, the BRI is attracting intense debate. Yet most analysis to date focuses on broad drivers, risks, and opportunities, largely considered to be emanating from a coherent policy imposed by Beijing. In this special issue, we instead examine the BRI as a relational, contested process - a bundle of intertwined discourses, policies, and projects that sometimes align but are sometimes contradictory. We move beyond policy-level, macro-economic, and classic geopolitical analysis to study China's global investments “from the ground”. Our case studies reveal the BRI to be dynamic and unstable, rhetorically appropriated for different purposes that sometimes but do not always coalesce as a coherent geopolitical and geoeconomic strategy. The papers in this special issue provide one of the first collections of deep empirical work on the BRI and a useful approach for grounding China's role in globalization in the critical contexts of complex local realities.

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Section: Theoretical Insights From Critical Methodologiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

China’s Belt and Road Initiative: Views from the ground

Oliveira

Murton

Rippa

et al. 2020

Political Geography

120

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…This inclusive model is rooted in Chinese civilizational and moral values and discourses emphasizing political non-interference, mutual respect and mutually beneficial relationships with the periphery, comprising a 'geopolitical culture' of the BRI (Dunford, 2020;Lin et al, 2019). Importantly there have also been critiques (and counter-critiques) levied against the BRI's ulterior motives, including its 'debt-trap diplomacy' and the use of Chinese labour for project construction (Brautigam, 2020;Lai et al, 2020).…”

Section: Geopolitical-economy Of Developmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Banking ‘development’: the geopolitical–economy of infrastructure financing

Anguelov¹

2020

Area Development and Policy

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In the post-2008 global economy, infrastructure development and financing have risen to the top of the development agenda, emerging as a contested field for global investments involving seemingly divergent interests, objectives, rationalities and practices. Whereas multilateral development banks such as the World Bank advocate the market-based public-private partnership aimed at attracting private finance and deepening marketized governance, China is forging a state-capitalist alternative through its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). These models are far from mutually exclusive. Through a conjunctural approach, the paper examines the broader trade and financial interdependencies in which these models are entangled, and the geopolitical-economic objectives enframing the emergent infrastructure regime. These are explored vis-à-vis Indonesian infrastructure projects, framed by competition between China and Japan.

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“…Thus, even if China's economic statecraft is based on the presumption of enhanced national economic security, there is more to be gained in the long-term from building up partner countries economically than simply fleecing their assets through "debt-trap diplomacy." At any rate, the latter is a concept, which has become more of a discourse framing device or meme than a measurable phenomenon (Brautigam 2020;Lai, Lin, and Sidaway 2020). The apparent contradiction between neorealist and neoliberal logics is resolved by understanding that the two are not incommensurable (Wight 1996).…”

Section: China's Belt and Road Initiative: Image And Realitymentioning

confidence: 99%

The dragon dithers: assessing the cautious implementation of China’s Belt and Road Initiative in Iran

Garlick

Havlová

2020

Eurasian Geography and Economics

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In the Belt and Road era, one would expect an increase in the amount of Chinese economic engagement with Iran due to its strategic position on the Persian Gulf and its rich oil reserves. Yet by 2020 a committed program of large-scale investment comparable to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) had not materialized in Iran. The article uses an analytically eclectic framework to examine the record of Chinese economic activity in Iran since the advent of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2013. The empirical analysis demonstrates that China uses a strategically hedged approach to economic engagement in the Persian Gulf incorporating ideational as well as material elements. Ideational elements include the BRI's intentional geographical "fuzziness" which enables it to act as a loose "policy envelope" for China's evolving foreign policy needs. Through its hedged approach, China aims to open up local markets to Chinese commercial actors and secure diversified oil supplies. At the same time, Beijing aims to soft balance against US regional hegemony while avoiding the appearance of a challenge to the regional status quo. China also hedges by attempting to maintain solid relations with as many regional actors as possible, including most importantly Iran's regional rival Saudi Arabia, from whom China is receiving ever higher imports of oil. Data reveal that Chinese economic engagement with Iran has increased in the BRI era, but at a slower rate than in some other BRI partner countries and not at the expense of its relations with Saudi Arabia.

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

Cited by 96 publications

References 45 publications

China’s Belt and Road Initiative: Views from the ground

China’s Belt and Road Initiative: Views from the ground

Banking ‘development’: the geopolitical–economy of infrastructure financing

The dragon dithers: assessing the cautious implementation of China’s Belt and Road Initiative in Iran

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