Abstract
In 2019 Foreign Policy described China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) as “the most talked about and least defined buzzword of this decade”. Given that confusion and the importance of leader political speeches in China - especially those of current President Xi Jinping - it is surprising that the BRI literature has little studied the two launch speeches of 2013. This article seeks to fill that gap, with study of those speeches and focus on the five cooperation-oriented areas announced in each. In comparative context those ten pillars appear not to be descended from new heaven but rather demonstrate overlap with the ten pillars of what was once relatively mainstream macroeconomic development policy, the Washington Consensus. In forward context of contemporary global political economy tensions, the need to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, the G7’s Build Back Better and the European Union’s Global Gateway ambitions also, this article may offer a timely fresh and comparative lens on the BRI.
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