Abstract
It has been over a decade since the emergence of what is now best known as the “Belt and Road Initiative” (BRI). This Special Issue, a decade after the BRI was launched, highlights the immense complexity not only of the idea itself but also of China’s global influence and the varied attitudes and responses towards it. We hope that these studies, with their diverse approaches and evidence bases, contribute to enriching the expanding literature on the BRI – a trend that is unlikely to wane anytime soon as China continues to be a major global force in the twenty-first century.
It has now been over a decade since Xi Jinping first announced the “Silk Road Economic Belt” (丝绸之路经济带, sichou zhilu jingji dai) on land in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, in September 2013. Later that year, in October, he also announced a new “twenty-first century Maritime Silk Road” (21世纪海上丝绸之路, ershiyi shiji haishang sichou zhilu) in Indonesia. These announcements marked the beginning of what is now best known as the “Belt and Road Initiative” (BRI; 一带一路, yidai yilu). For several years in the early first decade of the twenty-first century, as China’s economy grew exponentially in size following its entry into the World Trade Organisation in 2001, there were increasing calls for the country to clarify its global ambitions now that it was a genuinely global economic power. The short-lived notion – around the period between 2003 and 2005 – of China enjoying a “peaceful rise” (和平崛起, heping jueqi) didn’t help much in this regard, with the US and others calling on Beijing to state more clearly its commitment not just to multilateral trade agreements and arrangements, but to their underpinning values (Glaser and Medeiros, 2007). Hu Jintao’s presidency from 2002 to 2012 coincided with a period of spectacular gross domestic product (GDP) growth and diplomatic silence.
When China did indeed surpass Japan as the world’s second-largest economy in overall GDP terms in 2010, the need to clearly articulate its view on its global role became more urgent. Since Xi Jinping took power in 2012, the era of the “China Dream” (中国梦, zhongguo meng) and of “telling China’s story well” (讲好中国故事, jianghao zhongguo gushi), both internally and externally, has finally begun (Wang and Feng, 2016; Xue Er Shi Xi, 2021). The BRI, therefore, was a core part of the messaging that the country was now engaged in. The initial policy document jointly issued by three ministries of the State Council in 2015 talked of connectivity, a zone of free trade, people-to-people links, and greater cultural communication, all of which were predicated on win–win outcomes (National Development and Reform Commission, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Commerce, 2015). That was met increasingly, however, with external criticisms, which ranged from the general vagueness attributed to the BRI to its role in creating indebted partner countries as well as the suspicion that this was about attempting to acquire power, rather than being a cooperative, constructive member of the international community (Perlez and Huang, 2017). Former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, for instance, labelled the initiative something that did “harm” and framed it as the primary vehicle by which Beijing was extending its malign influence across the world to support authoritarianism and push back against democratic values (Murray-Atfield and Staff, 2020).
With over a decade now in existence, this is a good time to reflect on and review what the BRI has meant to the world so far. In 2015, there was no real track record, beyond alluding to China’s growing energy and economic interests in Africa, Latin America, and what became labelled as the “Global South.” Since then, a plethora of different treatments and studies have emerged, utilising various metrics, conceptual frameworks, and datasets (e.g. Garlick, 2020; Garlick and Havlová, 2020; Gerstl, 2020; Shakhanova and Garlick, 2020; Turcsanyi and Kachlikova, 2020; Vangeli, 2020). This Special Edition contributes to that literature with a set of contrasting approaches and geographical focuses regarding the BRI. This is a testament to the complexity of the phenomenon itself and its multidimensional character. The one thing that each contribution has, for all their differences, is a recognition of how complex the BRI is, and how it quickly evades straightforward frameworks and unilinear approaches.
In Africa, as Ajah and Onuoha (2025) write in their study of Nigerian experiences with the BRI, the record shows that things are not as simple as to support the notion that China is using its newly acquired economic assets solely to assert its power in its own interests. Acknowledging the often critical analysis offered by subscribers to neocolonial, neo-realism and dependency prism theorists, they opt to use complex interdependence theory, stating that the BRI has “provided Nigeria with an opportunity to secure funds for rehabilitating and upgrading its railway infrastructure” (Ajah and Onuoha, 2025: 134). Based on detailed interviews and field research in the country, they show a situation in which the BRI, not just in railways, but in ports and airports, has “yielded tangible results in addressing Nigeria’s infrastructural deficits” (Ajah and Onuoha, 2025: 137). That issue of tangibility is essential, with empirical data on both the amount Chinese partners have spent and the results they have achieved.
Recognising the issues around lack of transparency by Chinese partners at some points, and the problems around terms of funding and how these are negotiated and settled, the authors nonetheless conclude that the BRI offers Nigeria more opportunity than vulnerability, providing a cogent corrective to the blanket accusation of one-sided deals where “win–win” for China means that it gains twice.
Comerma (2024) addresses the issue of values and frameworks in the differing context of the European Union, and in particular, how normative language emanating from the Chinese government appeared in the eighty Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) issued between China and various European governments since 2018. To some, this was a clear attempt by China to gain validation more widely for its signature foreign policy initiative, and ultimately, for its own desire for influence, recognition, and status. It was linked, as Comerma argues, to a push for a form of soft power with Chinese characteristics, which was popular in the first decade of the twenty-first century and which lingered during the early Xi era. However, leaving aside those MOUs that were impossible to get hold of, in the two that she offers detailed analysis of – those with Italy and Hungary – the outcomes proved very different in the end. Despite adopting some of China’s normative language, its soft power was limited, particularly with an audience that holds European values (Comerma, 2024: 242). As she concludes, even if governments did accept Chinese normative language, which overrode their subscription to market values and democratic principles, in implementation, things have not gone smoothly. This is further testified to by the fact that Italy allowed its agreement on the BRI to lapse in 2022.
Lin’s (2024) approach looks not at a region or territory and its experience and engagement with BRI, but at the issue of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). As this article shows, China has shown interest not so much in soft power, but in what is labelled as “soft connectivity,” recognising that there were issues and responsibilities in terms of engagement and management of its overseas interests through the BRI that needed to be considered. As Lin writes, historically, China has “found itself at the receiving end of norms diffusion” (Lin, 2024: 154). With its own celebrated “Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence” adopted in the 1950s, China stands by a position of non-interference in the affairs of others. That should mean that its investments and engagements in the outside world do not seem to have overt social and political aims, despite the accusations made to the contrary by the country’s critics. Lin argues that while China, of course, does not compromise on observing its own mode of doing things domestically, it has proven a “rational and pragmatic” actor externally (Lin, 2024: 172). In environmental issues, in particular, it has found at least a relatively non-contentious space by which to explore CSR-related actions in ways which are seen as mutually beneficial and acceptable, even as its stance on labour rights has been far fainter.
The BRI land route was, as noted at the start of this introduction, initially announced in Kazakhstan. It is therefore timely that this volume includes a contribution by Primiano and Kudebayeva (2023) on how students at a university in Almaty view the BRI and Chinese influence generally. Their findings make sobering reading. Despite Central Asia being a key focus of BRI activity and often regarded as a region of largely positive relations with China, the views revealed through the surveys are largely negative and critical. Unsurprisingly, those with greater adherence to liberal and democratic values are the most critical of China, viewing the latter’s investments as a threat to the country’s oil and gas interests and displaying high levels of unease. At the same time, it is interesting and perhaps significant to note that the study also found a general lack of knowledge regarding the BRI and China’s presence in Kazakhstan.
Finally, shifting our attention to the sea, Schmitz (2024) offers an assessment of China’s historical statecraft in the context of BRI, with a specific focus on the instrumentalisation of the Chinese notion of tianxia (天下, all under heaven) by the country’s political and academic elites to narrate both China’s past and present as a maritime power and legitimate its claims over various maritime territories. Drawing on textual materials sourced from the China National Knowledge Infrastructure, one of the largest databases of academic publications in the country, Schmitz analyses the resurrection of memories of the now-celebrated Ming-era eunuch admiral Zheng He, as well as the archaeological and historical records of Zheng’s extensive explorations up to the coast of eastern Africa in the early fifteenth century. For Schmitz, the BRI embodies this expansive thinking of tianxia, which maps out a world where there are the “core region” and “surrounding, concentric zones of influence” (Schmitz, 2024: 215). Acknowledging that “[d]espite the ambitious narrative that frames it, in practice, BRI is a patchwork […],” Schmitz argues, the narrative of tianxia under the sea should be understood as “more than simply a strategy used to calm fears” (Schmitz, 2024: 214), but presenting a different notion of what international space might be, and of how, at least from China’s perspective, it seeks to operate within that space.
This Special Issue, a decade after the BRI appeared, shows the enormous complexity not only of the idea itself, but also of China’s global influence and the range of attitudes and responses to it. That the contributions contain perspectives from Africa, Europe, Central Asia, and the Asian region itself proves how expansive the reach of the project is, as well as how many different issues, from values to CSR, notions of power and dependency, and intellectual frameworks, are involved with it. We hope that these studies, with their very different approaches and evidence bases, help to enrich the growing literature on the BRI – a trend that is unlikely to disappear anytime soon as China continues to be a global force in the twenty-first century.
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