Implementation of the "One Belt, One Road" initiative in the post-Soviet space: pros and cons for Russia

Abstract

The implementation of the "One Belt, One Road" initiative, designed as a fl agship foreign policy concept, in the post-Soviet space in modern conditions is associated with such processes as expanding the real horizons for launching investment projects, involving more participants, diversifying existing and developing new tools, clarifying the regulatory framework, etc. These trends, in turn, require updating the system of criteria and practices for cooperation between China and the post-Soviet states. Initially, the "One Belt, One Road" format was perceived as a concept of creating an acceptable investment and trade and economic space used to maintain regional stability and create investment attractiveness for more economic niches of the countries involved, on the one hand, and building a more or less stable geopolitical infl uence of China and fi nding new niches for the transnationalization of Chinese business, on the other hand. The dynamics of the growth of exports of Chinese technologies and ideas in the context of the post-Soviet region reveals, among other things, serious concerns of less infl uential participants interested in protecting national economies and maintaining the eff ectiveness of state regulation, which is associated at least with increasing the pace of economic development and the establishment of their own rules of the game by the Chinese side. Accordingly, the commercial and political elite of the People's Republic of China is interested in ensuring more trusting and open relations through the development of special free trade zones and the adjustment of public diplomacy methods.