Intellectual Structure of the Belt and Road Initiative Research: A Scientometric Analysis and Suggestions for a Future Research Agenda

Mingchun Cao,Ilan Alon

doi:10.3390/su12176901

Abstract

China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has attracted increasing attention worldwide since its inception in 2013. Although the research is fast increasing in terms of publications, there is a lack of knowledge about the intellectual structure, research trends, and appropriate theories underpinning. Using bibliometric data from 1583 articles from 2013 to 2019 in the Web of Science and Scopus databases, we used bibliometric techniques and scientometric analyses to identify and analyze the intellectual structure, hotspots, and emerging trends in this field. We identified 18 clusters that we categorized into three groups for thematic discussion. Research gaps and future research directions were identified and proposed after qualitative content analysis. By providing the big picture of the latest research on BRI since it was initiated, this paper serves as a one-stop shop for multi-disciplinary research on the topic.

Highlights

During his two state visits to Kazakhstan and Indonesia separately in September and October 2013, Xi Jinping, the President of the People’s Republic of China, formally unveiled the broader vision that is known as the Belt and Road Initiative [1,2]
We explore three research questions: (1) What is the intellectual structure of the English-language literature on Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), based on bibliographic results? (2) What are the research hotspots, streams, and trending topics, based on the scientometric results? (3) What are the areas that require further investigation, providing future research opportunities?
We used various software programs, such as CiteSpace, Endnote, HistCite, VOSviewer, bibliometrix, and biblioshiny to data mine and analyze the 1583 English-language peer-reviewed papers on the subject of BRI from 2013–2019 that we retrieved from WOSCC and Scopus

Summary

Introduction

During his two state visits to Kazakhstan and Indonesia separately in September and October 2013, Xi Jinping, the President of the People’s Republic of China, formally unveiled the broader vision that is known as the Belt and Road Initiative (hereafter called “BRI”) [1,2]. On 28 March 2015, the first official blueprint was released jointly by the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Ministry of Commerce, with the authorization of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China [3]. It signified that the BRI had entered the actual planning and implementation stage. The initiative is comprised of two components: the “Silk Road Economic Belt”, an overland Eurasian economic network linking China with Asian, European, and Middle Eastern countries (the Belt), and the “21st Century Maritime Silk Road”, a maritime economic network running from Chinese coastal ports to the South China Sea, the Indian Ocean, Southeast Asia, the South Asian subcontinent, Africa, the Middle East, and Europe (the Road)

Methods

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Discussion

Conclusion