Challenging the Liberal Order: A Neo-Realist Analysis of China’s Belt & Road Initiative and U.S. Strategic Counter-Initiatives

China's Belt and Road Initiative and Its Implications for Southeast Asia Hong Yu (bio) During state visits to Kazakhstan and Indonesia in 2013, Xi Jinping announced the land-based Silk Road Economic Belt and the sea-based 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, respectively. Shortly after that, these two initiatives were combined to form one unified concept, known as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). This grand initiative, comprising various routes by sea and land, is intended to connect China with Southeast and South Asia, Central Asia, Pacific Oceania, Africa, and Europe. BRI is centered on both soft and hard infrastructure connectivity, aiming to forge an integrated and extensive network of regional infrastructure with China at its hub. BRI has gradually emerged as a top Chinese national strategy. Given China's emergence as a global power through industrial redeployment and outward investment, this initiative could reshape the geopolitical and geoeconomic landscape of Asia and beyond. BRI signals a shift in China's foreign policy and a departure from its long-held low-profile approach. Since Xi came to power in 2012, the Chinese government has adopted a far more proactive foreign policy stance, driven by global thinking.1 BRI serves as the key driver to advance China's interests overseas and demonstrates China's growing confidence and aspirations to be a rule-shaper in the economic governance of the region and beyond. Meanwhile, the demise of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), following the withdrawal of the United States, offers China further leeway to promote its New Silk Road agenda. The TPP's failure will increase the international momentum behind BRI to accelerate regional economic cooperation and integration through forging infrastructure, trade, and investment linkages. For the Southeast Asian countries, regional economic integration plays a very important role in mitigating external uncertainties and global economic vulnerabilities. The collapse of the TPP hit certain participating countries within Southeast Asia very hard, particularly Singapore. Being a tiny nation without an economic hinterland, Singapore has developed as the [End Page 117] most open and trade-dependent economy in the region. China's realization of BRI depends on the support and participation of other countries; in particular, the neighboring Southeast Asian countries are vital to the success of this grand initiative. The Southeast Asian countries, particularly developing countries like Indonesia and the Philippines, have largely welcomed BRI, which aims to promote close regional trade and investment linkage based on the improvement of interregional physical connectivity. Southeast Asia needs to focus consistently on constructing infrastructure in order to unleash the region's economic growth potential. The Southeast Asian countries consider that participating in BRI will help address their serious infrastructure deficits and accelerate industrial and economic growth. China has offered much-needed investment for connectivity-related infrastructure construction.2 This essay will first examine the opportunities for Southeast Asian countries to participate in BRI and then consider their perspectives on the challenges for the initiative. Opportunities for Southeast Asia Arising from BRI China's rise to become the world's second-largest economy and the largest trading nation has exerted a very powerful pull on the Southeast Asian economies. China has become the largest trading partner for all Southeast Asian countries except for the Philippines. The region, for its part, has benefited enormously from China's economic growth. It has taken advantage of the Sinocentric regional production network created since China's admission to the World Trade Organization in the early 2000s to export raw materials, intermediate goods, and mineral resources to China for final manufacturing into industrial goods before their export to the major consumption markets in the West. Setting aside for the moment the underlying geostrategic and geopolitical considerations, the potential benefits from BRI for Southeast Asia could be enormous. China has committed enormous financial resources to build a number of large-scale transportation projects aiming to improve interregional connectivity. For example, construction has already started on the Jakarta-Bandung high-speed railway in Indonesia and on a railway linking Mohan, on the Chinese border, with Vientiane, the capital of Laos. These two projects, both largely financed by Chinese banks and being [End Page 118] built by Chinese companies, mark Beijing's efforts to...

China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is an important initiative to strengthen connectivity and promote economic growth in many countries. China's strategy to stimulate economic growth by diversifying infrastructure investment under the Belt and Road Initiative demonstrates its commitment to promoting connectivity and sustainable development on a global scale. Through a proactive diversification policy, China reduces risks and seizes opportunities, ensuring sustainability and stability in a minimal economic environment. By embracing digitalization and upgrading financial infrastructure, China is accelerating the pace of economic transactions, supporting innovation and promoting inclusive growth along all BRI routes. As China continues to define future global investments under the BRI, its strategic approach offers a model for accelerating economic growth and connectivity across broad territories and populations. This paper examines the methodology of China's strategy to stimulate economic growth through a variety of infrastructure investments under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). He emphasizes the importance of diversification, digitalization and development of financial infrastructure. China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has attracted worldwide attention as one of the most ambitious infrastructure and economic development initiatives in modern history. Since its inception in 2013, the BRI has sought to revive old trade routes, enhance connectivity and develop economic cooperation in Asia, Europe and Africa.By embracing digital innovation and upgrading financial systems, China is expediting economic transactions, fostering innovation, and promoting inclusive growth along all BRI corridors. As China continues to shape the future trajectory of global investments through the BRI, its strategic blueprint serves as a model for accelerating economic growth and connectivity across vast regions and diverse populations. Through a comprehensive examination of China's approach, this paper contributes to a deeper understanding of the dynamics driving economic development and connectivity within the context of the Belt and Road Initiative. Keywords: diversification, Belt and Road initiative (BRI), digitalization, perfect storm, infrastructure, COVID-19, logistics, sustainable development.

India as a Challenge to China's Belt and Road Initiative Gurpreet S. Khurana (bio) The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) was announced by Xi Jinping in 2013 and comprises both the land-based Silk Road Economic Belt (launched in August 2013) and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road (introduced in September 2013). The initiative was showcased in a manner that was too appealing to be ignored by the countries of the Indian Ocean region. Many Indians also viewed BRI as highly promising for their country. As a virtual "island state" constrained by landward geophysical barriers in the north, India is in dire need of developing its economic corridors and maritime transportation infrastructure. Projections indicate that by 2050, India will be the second-largest economy (in purchasing power parity terms), premised inter alia on the growth trends of merchandise trade.1 However, leading Indian economists point out that a large part of the country's export potential remains unrealized, mostly in its own neighborhood. The key reason for this loss of competitiveness is rising "trade costs," mainly for maritime transportation, which are heightened by the lack of connectivity and port infrastructure.2 Therefore, even though the Indian government never endorsed BRI, a few Indian analysts (including this author) were of the view that the Chinese initiative was pregnant with geoeconomic opportunities for India, and, premised on the ongoing India-China rivalry, it may not be prudent for New Delhi to throw the baby out with the bathwater.3 Eventually, however, the official Indian position against BRI hardened to the extent that India was the one key country in [End Page 27] the Indian Ocean region not represented at the major international Belt and Road Forum organized in Beijing in May 2017.4 This essay aims to examine some mainstream Indian perspectives on BRI and analyze its likely adverse ramifications for India. Based on these findings, the essay considers how India should (and is likely to) tailor its foreign policy and national security responses to this Chinese initiative. Mainstream Indian Perspectives on BRI Owing largely to the country's geographic location and disposition, India's national interests are closely intertwined with developments in the Indian Ocean region. In this context, BRI is seen in New Delhi as China's endeavor to capitalize on the desires, vulnerabilities, and insecurities of regional countries. Sri Lanka, for instance, sought BRI to bolster investment in its port-led economic development after the 2009 end to decades of internal conflict, but later became beset by debt. In December 2017, Sri Lanka was compelled to grant China a 99-year lease and 70% stake in the deepwater port at Hambantota.5 In Maldives, China played on the political fissures and local fears of sea-level rise to involve Chinese companies in reclamation projects. Today, the country owes China $1.5 billion—about 30% of its GDP—in construction costs.6 In Malaysia, China's exorbitantly expensive Melaka Gateway port project was premised on Kuala Lumpur's geoeconomic rivalry with Singapore to host a major hub port in the Asia-Pacific.7 Pakistan, for its part, was much too willing to cede to China the transit corridor from Kashi to Gwadar in order to reduce its own strategic vulnerability vis-à-vis [End Page 28] militarily superior India and develop the Baluchistan Province. Pakistan owes China at least $10 billion in debt for the construction of Gwadar port and other projects.8 Viewed in New Delhi, China's approach runs counter to India's vision for collective and inclusive economic development of the Indian Ocean region. India believes that it cannot attain prosperity for its citizens in isolation from the regional neighborhood. BRI is also viewed in New Delhi as China's attempt to outsource its low-end "sunset" industries to initiative partners, letting them worry about the attendant issues of environmental pollution. To redress this issue, in June 2017, in the document "Vision for Maritime Cooperation under the Belt and Road Initiative," China attempted to link BRI with blue economy and sustainable development concepts.9 However, repackaging does not change the product. Pakistan's coal-based power plant project in Rahim Yar Khan, proposed to be built by...

This article examines China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) as a strategicinstrument in its efforts to challenge the existing hegemonic order in the IndoPacific region. Amid growing geopolitical rivalry, particularly with the UnitedStates and its allies, China has employed the BRI not merely as an economicdevelopment scheme, but as a tool of influence projection, regional integration,and soft power consolidation. Using a qualitative-descriptive approach andcritical geopolitical analysis, this study explores how China’s BRI projects ranging from infrastructure development to digital connectivity are reshapingregional power dynamics. The research finds that China’s approach blendseconomic diplomacy with strategic interest, fostering dependencies andinfluence in key Indo-Pacific states. However, the implementation of BRI alsoencounters resistance in the form of debt-trap diplomacy allegations,environmental critiques, and counter-initiatives like the U.S.-led Indo-PacificStrategy. The article concludes that the BRI is central to China’s vision of aSinocentric order, signaling a shift from unipolar to multipolar geopoliticalcompetition in the Indo-Pacific.

This article studies the formation process of China's belt and road initiative (BRI) – the most important Chinese foreign policy initiative under Xi Jinping. It argues that the BRI was put forward as a broad policy idea that was subsequently developed with relatively concrete content. During this process, the shifting international landscapes have gradually driven the BRI from a periphery strategy into a global initiative. By examining the case of Jiangsu Province, this article also shows how Chinese local governments have actively deployed their preferred narratives to influence and (re‐)interpret the BRI guidelines of the central government in order to advance their own interests. As a result, this produces a variety of competing, ambiguous and contradictory policy narratives of the BRI within China, which undermines the Chinese central government's monopoly on the BRI narratives. This leaves the BRI as a very vague and broad policy slogan that is subject to change and open to interpretation. In this regard, the existing analyses – that consider the BRI as Beijing's masterplan to achieve its geopolitical goals – pay insufficient attention to the BRI's domestic contestation and overstate the BRI's geopolitical implications.

The U.S. Response to the Belt and Road Initiative:Answering New Threats with New Partnerships Arzan Tarapore (bio) The United States has embraced a policy of "strategic competition" with China.1 This competition is most acute in East Asia, where Chinese policies directly challenge the United States' long-standing strategic primacy. China has primed its rapid military modernization to disrupt and deter U.S. forces and has used coercive force to assert territorial revisionism in the South China Sea. But the competition spans multiple regions and dimensions. China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) seeks to build Chinese influence across the entire Eurasian landmass and adjacent waters, often at a cost to U.S. interests. Washington has denounced BRI as a "predatory" program that builds influence through corrupt and secretive "debt trap" deals.2 But alongside its economic edifice, BRI is also freighted with strategic implications. The new trade and infrastructure deals will increase Chinese leverage to shape partner nations' preferences, edge out U.S. influence, and expand Chinese military presence.3 South Asia illustrates these political-military dimensions of BRI. China is cultivating an increasingly dependent ally in Pakistan and building a sprawling military presence across the Indian Ocean region, while India and its partners scramble to mount a counterbalance. This essay outlines the implications of these dynamics for U.S. policy. It shows, first, how BRI in South Asia threatens U.S. strategic interests and how the United States is responding through new partnerships with India and other countries. The essay concludes by discussing some recommended principles for the future of U.S. policy in the Indo-Pacific. [End Page 34] How BRI Threatens U.S. Strategic Interests On the surface, BRI offers tangible and immediate economic benefits for regions like South Asia. The region's developing states have a desperate demand for the speedily constructed transportation, energy, and telecommunications infrastructure that BRI promises. The terms and modalities of BRI projects have generated skepticism and opposition, which may prompt China to adjust its approach in its decades-long BRI campaign. More fundamentally, the concept of BRI—and its South Asian centerpiece, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC)—presents a broad threat to U.S. interests in at least three ways. First and most directly, BRI shields governments that harbor anti-U.S. interests and entrenches their inimical policies. The clearest example of this is Pakistan. The United States and Pakistan have long endured a relationship that oscillates between amity and estrangement. After years of mounting frustration over Pakistan's support for terrorist networks, Washington ultimately cut most aid in 2018.4 CPEC, however, was there to cushion the blow. With a source of lavish financial patronage, Pakistan is now free to persist with its strategy of using militant proxy groups for influence in Afghanistan and attacks against India. Not only is China more tolerant of Pakistan's destabilizing policies; it actively shields Pakistan from external pressure—most prominently, by repeatedly blocking UN action against terrorists such as Masood Azhar, the leader of Jaish-e-Muhammad, who claims sanctuary in Pakistan.5 China's patronage of Pakistan, with CPEC at its center, has also contributed to sharpening strategic alignments in the region. Pakistan is now financially beholden to China and firmly within its orbit. Even if the United States were to resume military aid to Pakistan, which is unlikely in the short term, the entrenched presence of CPEC means that Washington would struggle to recover even the minor influence it previously held. The United States, which has simultaneously made clear its support for India, can no longer serve as a credible intermediary in the perennial security crises between India and Pakistan. In February 2019, as India considered its response to the terrorist attack in Pulwama, U.S. national security adviser John Bolton deviated from decades of U.S. practice and encouraged [End Page 35] the Indian military's retaliation at Balakot.6 With greatly diminished external brakes on escalation, India and Pakistan were able to introduce unprecedented levels of risk to the crisis.7 Through BRI, China has and will continue to also shape the political trajectories of other states in the region. The examples of Mahinda Rajapaksa...

China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is a significant infrastructure and economic development initiative that aims to connect Asia, Europe, and Africa through a network of infrastructure projects. The BRI has implications for the South Asian region, as several South Asian countries are participating in the initiative. This paper provides an overview of the BRI, its goals, and its potential implications for the South Asian region. The paper examines the BRI's impact on the South Asian region in several areas, including trade, investment, energy, and connectivity. The BRI has the potential to increase trade and investment flows between China and South Asia, which could benefit the region's economies. However, it also raises concerns about the potential for increased Chinese influence in the region, as well as the risk of debt traps for participating countries. The paper also explores the BRI's implications for regional connectivity and energy security. The BRI's infrastructure projects could improve connectivity in the region, but they could also exacerbate existing geopolitical tensions, particularly between India and China. Additionally, the BRI's energy projects could help address the region's energy needs, but they could also increase reliance on China for energy resources. Overall, the BRI has significant implications for the South Asian region, and its impact will depend on how it is implemented and how participating countries manage the risks associated with the initiative.

This paper makes a mid-term assessment for China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) from the perspective of trade, investment and finance, respectively. We will discuss the economic progress of the Belt and Road Initiative from the trade, investment and financial perspectives, respectively. Trade is most accessible field for China to breakthrough as it can be instantly affected by short-term policies such as removing tariff or non-tariff barriers. Our findings also confirm the rapid progress in trade, though the development was not equally distributed in the area, with the ASEAN, Middle East, South Asia and Russia constitute the largest trade share with China. Our analysis on the BRI’s spillover effect on the US and the EU reveals that the BRI plan poses actually very little substitution effect but under some scenarios even positive impact on the EU-China trade. We especially assess the impacts on the EU, which sits at the other end of the BRI area, and find that better connectedness within the BRI area will bring higher economic benefits to the EU than free trade agreements.

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), proposed by China, is recognized as one of the largest and most challenging global infrastructure development projects. China's purely economic approach has encouraged many countries along the BRI route to participate in this project. The BRI has significant impacts on the countries along its route, including Iran. Due to its geographical location, Iran is a historical bridge on the historic Silk Road, connecting the East and the West, and a route to Europe. It is also of great cultural, economic, and strategic importance, and can join this Chinese program in the fields of science, technology, transportation, energy, and investment. This initiative has major effects on Iran's geoeconomics and plays a vital role in its economic and social development. This article provides a comprehensive examination of the impacts of China's Belt and Road Initiative on Iran's geoeconomic, analyzing the opportunities, challenges, and the economic and strategic implications of this initiative for Iran. It seeks to answer the question of Iran's position in the BRI and what the consequences of this initiative will be for Iran's geoeconomy. The research findings indicate that the successful implementation of the BRI can enhance economic cooperation in the region, revive Iran's geoeconomic position, and enable Iran to play a more active role in non-Western collaborations, providing Tehran with an opportunity to evade Western sanctions. However, the article also examines potential challenges, such as increased economic dependency on China and negative environmental impacts. It offers recommendations for optimizing the opportunities presented by the BRI and mitigating its challenges. The results of this research show that despite Iran's central position in the BRI and its strategic geographic location, it has not fully benefited from the advantages of this project.

Although less than a decade old, the People's Republic of China's (PRC) Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has been the subject of considerable attention and conjecture. After initial waves of speculation and punditry, now more rigorous work on the plans, structure, and implementation of this initiative is beginning to contribute to the debate. In this essay, we showcase how three recent monographs make sense of the BRI: One Belt One Road: Chinese Power Meets the World, by Eyck Freymann; The Belt Road and Beyond: State-Mobilized Globalization in China: 1998–2018, by Min Ye; and Orchestration: China's Economic Statecraft across Asia and Europe, by James Reilly. Surveying the arguments and findings of these works together, we seek to draw out insights and implications for how we should understand the BRI. In particular, we highlight the political significance of the BRI's close association with PRC leader Xi Jinping, the ways in which the BRI follows long-standing patterns of campaign-style mobilization within the PRC, the crucial role of local partners, and the BRI's potential consequences for the larger international system in light of the broader literature in international relations. We conclude by discussing the need to now also consider unintended outcomes.

China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is heralded as the largest investment in infrastructure in history and is expected to re‐shape the geographies of urbanisation in the coming decades. In this paper we review the burgeoning, yet still embryonic literature on the BRI. Our aim is to move beyond currently dominant framings of the BRI as a geopolitical or economic strategy that tend to overlook the complex embeddedness of infrastructure. Drawing on theories of planetary urbanisation, we argue that the BRI constitutes a form of urbanisation that is bound up with the socio‐spatial and ecological restructuring of global capitalism. We illustrate this by mapping and analysing energy projects under the BRI. Overall, we outline a research agenda on the BRI that calls for (1) a more nuanced analysis of its spatial and scalar politics; (2) approaching the BRI as a distinctly urban question; and (3) a disruption of the dominant China‐centric discussions through critical in‐depth case‐study analysis.

Over the last decade, scholarship on China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), also called the New Silk Road, has burgeoned. However, it is only recently that analysis has interrogated the BRI as a driver of global urban transformation. In this paper, we advance an in-depth review of literature generated since 2013 that has critically examined relations between the BRI and urban-scale processes. Based on a categorization of studies into three areas, staging of the urban BRI, the building of BRI cities and living in BRI cities, we suggest that the urban is integral to the scope and impacts of the initiative. As the BRI goes into its second decade, we argue that BRI’s infrastructural spaces can be seen as new landscapes where novel kinds of urbanization are emerging, influencing patterns of socio-spatial contestation, and demanding new narratives of social change to make sense of cityscapes and urban futures worldwide.

Taking the Belt and Road Initiative as the object of study, this paper explores how the Belt and Road strategy enhances China's geopolitical discourse and its specific impacts in Asia, Africa and Europe, and at the same time explores the opportunities and potential risks of the Initiative, revealing the role of the Belt and Road in international relations and providing a reference for national policymaking. Launched in 2013, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has become a crucial strategy for China to enhance globalization and foster international collaboration. By investing in infrastructure and promoting trade across Asia, Africa, and Europe, the BRI has significantly expanded China's influence and established it as a key player among emerging economies. However, this initiative has also raised concerns about geopolitical implications and shifts in global power dynamics, particularly regarding dependency on Chinese investments. As China strengthens its ties with countries along the BRI route, it faces challenges from Western nations wary of its expanding influence. Overall, the BRI represents both opportunities for economic growth and risks associated with increased competition and geopolitical tensions on the global stage.

China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), labelled as the world's largest infrastructure program, has so far directed investments mainly to energy and transportation networks in Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. Since its launch, the BRI has changed significantly in terms of scale, stakeholders, and investment sectors and continues to evolve, also in light of the COVID-19 crisis. However, so far, there is no systematic and comprehensive analysis of how it might look like in the medium-term future (2035), even though academic literature on the BRI is burgeoning. We address this research gap and apply a scenario method with a 2 × 2 matrix, building on insights from ∼40 qualitative interviews with representatives from business, non-profit and public sectors from China and BRI countries, complemented by desk research of press and academic articles. We conceptualise the BRI alongside its degree of economic globalisation and multilateralism, which are both impacted by the global pandemic response. We arrive at the four scenarios Asian, Vibrant, Irrelevant, and International BRI. These scenarios show that different development are possible with the BRI's geographical scope, the investment volumes and sectors, the funding structure, and also the orientation towards sustainability. These post-pandemic pathways of the BRI might help decision-makers in business and politics to prepare their responses and strategies. The scenarios can also inform the academic debate around conceptualising the BRI and provide a qualitative basis for future quantitative impact assessments.

PurposeThe belt and road initiative (BRI) emanates from China and seeks to connect Europe, Asia and Africa through transport and telecommunications infrastructure. Despite the importance of Africa in the BRI network, very little research has been done on the BRI in Africa, and even less of this emanates from Africa itself. In particular, considering that the BRI investments in Africa are largely transport related, there is almost no research covering the area of logistics, which should be greatly affected by the infrastructure investments. This paper sought to establish the current state of logistics research related to the BRI in Africa.Design/methodology/approachA bibliometric analysis was conducted on documents extracted from the SCOPUS database.FindingsThe findings indicate that there is a lack of research in critical areas such as environmental, social and economic impact of BRI transport investments, governance, logistics performance and international cooperation. In particular, there is a massive gap in local knowledge regarding the BRI.Research limitations/implicationsThe study is limited to published research indexed in the SCOPUS database. Future research directions include empirical studies into BRI project initiation investigation, economic and environmental impacts, governance structures and policy intervention requirements and macro-level logistics impacts.Practical implicationsThe study emphasises the importance publishing all the relevant information regarding BRI related projects in Africa to create transparency.Originality/valueThe study investigates the current research on the effect of China's BRI on transport and logistics in Africa through a bibliometric analysis. The investigation reveals that while there are huge investments in infrastructure, the actual effect on logistics of participating countries in Africa has not been interrogated.