An Introduction to a Way of Increasing Chinese International Influence: The Implementation of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)

Abstract

This article is written for a general audience of economists, including those who have a novice understanding of this subject. China continues to become more important in the community of nations. In order\to promote further internationalization of China’s influence, major strategies are being pursued. The focus of this article is the implementation of the ambitious program of the Belt Road Initiative (BRI). Within China, this program is called One Belt One Road (Chinese: 一带一路; pinyin: Yīdài Yīlù) or OBOR for short. This is a global infrastructure development strategy adopted by the Chinese government in 2013 to invest in more than 150 countries and international organizations (World Bank, 2019). This article states that China benefits from the BRI and it was found that lower- and middle-income countries are more inclined to join the BRI, in comparison to high income countries This tendency is not 100 percent true. Simultaneously, there is the effort to increase the use of Chinese Renminbi (RMB) in transactions between all nations. (Chinese yuan is another phrase for RMB.) The Chinese RMB already has attained the status of reserve currency (Gentle, 2016). Of course, there is a lot of synergy between the implementation of the BRI and other means for increasing the international presence of China. This article asks the research question of does the BRI increase China’s international presence in the BRI? The answer is yes, considering the many countries, organizations and projects involved in the BRI. Tables in this article convey this information. This article may serve as a broad introduction to the BRI. The reader can thus move on to explore what other researchers have done on this issue.