ABSTRACT China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is an ambitious government-led project that has attracted sustained media attention since its launch in 2013. This article employs multimodal critical discourse analysis, in conjunction with van Dijk’s (2000) ideological discourse analysis, as a theoretical framework to examine the narratives presented in four episodes—Ecuador, Panama, Jamaica, and Mexico—from the BBC World Service podcast series Stories from the New Silk Road: The Americas. The analysis focuses on the discourse features embedded in the multimodal resources of the podcasts, including images, episode introductions, and the narratives of both BBC reporters and local interviewees. The findings show that these four countries are depicted as facing significant economic, social, and governance challenges as a result of the BRI. Additionally, this article contributes to the theoretical development of the ideological square model by elaborating on the dynamics of defining “us” and “them,” the uneven distribution of discourse properties, the hierarchical structure of the four polarized representations, and the discursive strategies of neglecting, reframing, and coloring.

This paper investigates the impact of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) on the domestic value-added ratio (DVAR) of Chinese firms’ green product exports. Utilizing highly detailed microdata from the China Customs Trade Statistics Database, CSMAR Database, and iFind Database (2000–2016), we employ a difference-in-differences (DID) method to identify the causal effect and underlying mechanisms. Our findings reveal that: (i) BRI participation leads to a significant average increase of 0.076 in DVAR for firms’ green product exports; (ii) This increase is primarily driven by enhanced green technological innovation, improved green credit support, and strengthened firms’ ESG performance; (iii) The BRI’s effect is particularly pronounced for firms with higher financing constraints and those in less marketized regions. This paper enriches the research on assessing the trade and environmental effects of the BRI from a micro-firm perspective, offering valuable insights for enhancing firms’ capacity in green value-added creation.

ABSTRACT China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has delivered uneven outcomes in overseas railway development, in sharp contrast to Beijing’s domestic infrastructure achievements. Why do some Chinese-backed railway projects proceed relatively smoothly while others are delayed, renegotiated, or stalled? This article explains such variation through the concept of sociopolitical regimes, defined by two dimensions of host-country politics: inter-elite cohesion versus contestation and elite-mass compliance versus resistance. Combining these dimensions, the article develops a typological framework that identifies four regime types-consensual, fragmented, contentious, and antagonistic-and links them to the varying likelihood of infrastructure failure. Comparative case studies of major Chinese-backed railway projects in mainland Southeast Asia illustrate how this typology captures distinct pathways of infrastructure failure. Myanmar’s antagonistic regime has generated the highest risk of failure, while Laos’s consensual regime has facilitated the smoothest implementation. Thailand′s fragmented regime and Vietnam′s contentious regime occupy intermediate positions, with project challenges driven respectively by elite contestation and societal resistance. Drawing on fieldwork, interviews, and secondary sources, this article shows how host-country sociopolitical configurations mediate the implementation of transnational infrastructure projects. By conceptualizing infrastructure failure as a graduated and processual condition rather than a binary outcome, this study advances a more nuanced political economy of the BRI and highlights the centrality of state-society relations in shaping cross-border infrastructure development.

ABSTRACT This study examines the impact of bilateral value chain embeddedness between China and its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) trade partners on carbon emissions. The motivation for this study arises from the growing importance of understanding how trade relationships influence environmental outcomes, especially in the context of the BRI. Using data from 2001 to 2022, the analysis employs panel fixed-effects models, spatial Durbin models, and threshold regression techniques to investigate both direct and indirect effects on carbon emissions. The results reveal that stronger value chain integration significantly reduces emissions across multiple levels. Specifically, the ‘energy efficiency improvement effect’, driven by technological innovation, outweighs the ‘energy consumption intensification effect’ from economic growth, resulting in net carbon reduction. The study identifies two primary decarbonization pathways: technological diffusion and industrial upgrading. Additionally, value chain integration generates positive spatial spillovers, contributing to emissions reductions in neighbouring economies. These findings suggest that China and BRI countries should enhance green value chain cooperation, promote the development of free trade zones, and advance low-carbon development under the BRI framework.

Factors influencing the sense of place among belt and road international students in Chengdu, China: A configurational perspective using fsQCA.

This study investigates whether the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) mitigates the impact of exchange rate volatility on China’s exports to BRI partner countries across different technology levels. A GARCH(1,1) model is employed to estimate exchange rate volatility from monthly exchange rates using bilateral export data at the SITC 5-digit level from the UN Comtrade database for the years 2006–2022. Export goods are divided into three categories: high-, medium-, and low-technology manufacturers; resource-based manufacturers; and primary products. The results imply that the BRI weakens the US dollar and mitigates the negative effects of RMB exchange rate volatility on high- and medium-tech exports. Furthermore, the policy increases China's exports in all fields of technology. The findings also reveal that China's exports increased during both the COVID-19 outbreak and the global financial crisis of 2008. The findings demonstrate that the BRI can help mitigate the negative effects of currency rate volatility and increase export stability when the global economy is uncertain.

ABSTRACT This article examines the emergence of a China-led order within the broader context of a multi-order world through a narrative-based analytical approach, using power, principles, and practices (PPP) as the core framework. Drawing on cultural–historical path dependency and relational International Relations theory, the study highlights how China articulates its worldview through cultural-historical narratives of Tianxia, Humane Authority, Equilibrium and Harmony. The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) stands at the heart of China’s global strategy, functioning simultaneously as a narrative of order and a practice of order-building across the Global South. The article concludes that, rather than representing a straightforward material expansion or an ideological confrontation, China articulates and promotes a relational vision of global order framed around harmony, interdependence, and moral authority – an emerging alternative to the liberal international order.

ABSTRACT How do the European Union (EU) and the People’s Republic of China (PRC), as leadership-type regional powers, use discourse to shape regional order and structure the roles, responsibilities and expectations of neighbouring states? A corpus-assisted critical discourse analysis (CDA) of European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) documents (2004-21) and Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) texts (2013-21) identifies recurring patterns of role attribution, action modality and expectation framing. The EU performs leadership primarily through procedural legitimation, embedding partners within rules, instruments and administrative pathways, whereas the PRC foregrounds symbolic and relational language, historical narratives and ‘win-win’ promises. Viewed through the lens of regional leadership, these styles share a logic of discursive governance: repeated formulas stabilise expectations, encode hierarchy and sustain authority without overt coercion. Discursive leadership can thus be conceptualised as a strategic mechanism of regional power.

Over the past decade, the People’s Republic of China has emerged as one of the most influential actors on the international stage, expanding its economic, political, and strategic presence across nearly all regions of the world. The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), launched in 2013 by President Xi Jinping, represents the principal instrument through which Beijing projects its geoeconomic power and consolidates its global influence. In this context, the Eastern Mediterranean has become one of the most significant regions for China’s strategic outlook, combining clear geopolitical, economic, energy-related, and maritime advantages. The Eastern Mediterranean’s position as a key maritime corridor linking Asia to Europe, its growing energy importance following the discovery of substantial natural resources, and its function as a major node of international trade make the region vital for the Maritime Silk Road. Consequently, China has significantly increased its presence through large-scale infrastructure investments, technological cooperation, economic agreements, and, in certain cases, limited security initiatives. This study aims to examine China’s geopolitical interests in the Eastern Mediterranean by analyzing the impact of the Belt and Road Initiative on its relations with the region’s principal states: Greece, Türkiye, Egypt, Israel, and Cyprus. Through an assessment of concrete infrastructure, port, energy, and technology projects, the study evaluates how these engagements are reshaping regional power dynamics and contributing to the expansion of China’s influence.

The China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), as a flagship component of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), has emerged as a transformative framework for infrastructure development, regional connectivity, and economic cooperation in Pakistan. Beyond its traditional focus on trade and transportation, CPEC has created new opportunities for tourism development by facilitating the establishment of integrated tourism corridors across strategically important regions of Pakistan. This study examines the role of CPEC-driven tourism corridors in promoting cross-border tourism development and fostering regional economic integration. The paper explores how enhanced road networks, upgraded transport infrastructure, and improved accessibility to remote tourist destinations such as Gilgit-Baltistan, Hunza, Skardu, Gwadar, and Khunjerab have increased tourism mobility and strengthened Pakistan’s position as a regional tourism hub. By linking Pakistan with China, Central Asia, and South Asia, these corridors enable greater cultural exchange, tourism diversification, and transnational visitor flows. The study adopts a qualitative analytical approach based on secondary data, policy reports, government publications, and existing scholarly literature to evaluate the economic and strategic significance of tourism corridors under CPEC. Findings indicate that CPEC-driven tourism infrastructure contributes significantly to local employment generation, hospitality sector expansion, small business development, and regional income growth. Furthermore, tourism corridors enhance cross-border cooperation by integrating tourism markets and encouraging joint investment opportunities between participating countries. However, several challenges remain, including security concerns, environmental sustainability issues, inadequate tourism services, and regulatory barriers affecting international tourist movement. The paper argues that with effective policy planning, sustainable tourism strategies, and stronger bilateral cooperation, CPEC can redefine Pakistan’s tourism landscape and establish a new paradigm for regional tourism integration. The study concludes that tourism corridors under CPEC represent not only a mechanism for destination development but also a strategic instrument for long-term economic connectivity and regional prosperity in South and Central Asia.

This paper focuses exclusively on economic factors to explore Australia’s attitude shift towards the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) from 2013 to 2026, tracing its trajectory from cautious observation to deliberate alienation. Through an in-depth analysis of structural trade dependency, global market competitiveness pressures, and investment security paranoia. The study argues that Australia’s stance is not a passive response to geopolitical shifts but a strategic choice driven by inherent economic anxieties, aiming to offer insights into the dynamics of middle-power responses to China’s international cooperation initiatives. The research demonstrates how dependency on China’s market, competition in key sectors such as resources and infrastructure, and distorted perceptions of Chinese investment have collectively shaped Australia’s alienation from the BRI. The findings highlight the complexity of economic interdependence in bilateral relations.

China seems to have entered into a new global leadership phase of economic diplomacy where its actors increasingly resort to new resources, tools and strategies serving well-defined national interests, such as the Made in China 2025 initiative, the Dual Circulation Strategy (DCS) and the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). This has intensified the interrelated challenges to the EU's economic security, industrial competitiveness and strategic autonomy, contributing to increasing supply chain vulnerabilities and dependencies. This increased economic challenge resulted in more assertive multi-layered EU-level policy approach, characterized by the de-risking strategy with four complementary policy goals. We used deductive coding of meticulously selected leadership speeches by Chinese top policymakers between 2013 and 2022 to assess whether this shift in EU-China economic diplomacy relations had an impact on the key narratives within the official Chinese high-level policy statements. The coding focuses on the significant and meaningful representation of the EU by China and vice versa, and on particular positive or negative descriptions of the EU by China and vice versa. Our main findings entail that, despite the more grounded EU approach towards China, no significant alterations are apparent in Chinese leadership discourse which remains at a pragmatic level focused on mutual benefits as long as economic engagement affairs are not interlinked with Chinese governance or territorial issues. These findings suggest that China needs the EU as a reliable economic partner amid the growing geostrategic tensions towards the US or Japan, which provides the EU with a strategic room for manoeuvre towards open strategic autonomy. Such autonomy could be strengthened by re-negotiating core aspects of economic links with China, such as the relocation of more productive facilities of Chinese green technologies to Europe or pushing for a more open attitude from China towards European investments in critical economic sectors.

This paper analyzes China-Italy trade relations pre- and post-Italy’s withdrawal from the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). By incorporating a long-term historical perspective from 1990 to 2024, the quantitative data reveals that bilateral trade has demonstrated remarkable resilience, remaining stable despite the withdrawal. The analysis indicates that the prosperity of China-Italy trade is built upon deep structural complementarity rather than a single policy framework. Furthermore, external shocks such as the COVID-19 outbreak impacted trade volume significantly more than the BRI exit. Contrary to existing studies, this analysis suggests that Italy’s withdrawal will not fundamentally disrupt bilateral economic relations. Instead, the withdrawal provides an opportunity for Italy to reassess its long-term strategy vis-à-vis China, working toward a more balanced and sustainable relationship driven by market forces rather than political commitments.

Chinese migrant entrepreneurs as symbolic broker: grassroots practices in the bottom-up production of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) discourse

Sustainable hydropower development under the Belt and Road Initiative: Role of international cooperation and its carbon reduction effects.

How do visa policies function as infrastructural mechanisms within the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) framework?This question investigates how mobility policies facilitate controlled labour flows and urban development to reconfigureglobal power centres. While China leverages visa policies to gain status and redirect economic activity, it remains subject toWestern mobility regimes. Cases such as Sino-Serbian relations illustrate how Western-imposed mobility domination persisteven as China ascends in global influence, and China is seeking strategic destination replacement to shift power away fromthe West. The Chinese government strategically facilitates visa liberalization agreements to promote cultural exchange,economic interdependence, and geopolitical alignment with participating countries. This paper argues that visa policies canbe used as an important infrastructural tool to reshape global orders in the BRI to increase China’s internationalstatus. China’s pursuit of favourable visa policies within BRI states is a deliberate status-seeking strategy. By situating visapolicies within the broader discourse on migration infrastructure and global mobility divides, this study contributes tounderstanding how states employ non-material infrastructural tools to advance strategic objectives. Through aninterdisciplinary lens that incorporates political science, migration studies, and international relations, this researchunderscores the significance of visa diplomacy in shaping the evolving global landscape under the BRI. This paper is structuredas follows. Existing scholarship on migration infrastructure, global mobility divides, and China’s visa diplomacy within the BRIframework is examined, and it identifies visa policies as a key yet overlooked aspect of international status-seeking. I seek totackle this issue using the socio-psychology framework of Social Identity Theory with modifications: Firstly, China seeksfavourable visa policies to increase its citizens’ comparative status within its sphere of influence to project state socialmobility and social creativity. Secondly, the concept of destination replacement is introduced with the case study of Serbia,where BRI is a strategic instrument for China to enhance its reputation by countering the influence of Western states. Thepaper concludes with a brief discussion on the motivation of BRI participants to engage with both unilateral and bilateralChinese visa diplomacies and calls for more future research on visa diplomacy and global order-building within specificframeworks of regional geopolitics.

ABSTRACT As China's influence expands in South Asia through the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), small states face the challenge of navigating Sino‐Indian rivalry. While there is erstwhile work on the implications of this growing Sino‐India rivalry on South Asia, there is limited analysis of how small South Asian states have been adjusting their foreign policies. This study examines how small states have adapted their strategies since the BRI's initiation in 2013. This study argues that there is a shift from traditional bandwagoning with India to hedging between India and China. By leveraging Chinese economic investments and India's strategic ties, such states pursue strategic autonomy, maximizing economic benefits while minimizing dependency. Understanding these evolving strategies offers insights into the agency of small states by demonstrating their ability to operate between major powers by safeguarding their national interests.

ABSTRACT Conventional wisdom argues that more powerful states inevitably dictate the foreign policy of small states, but there is a growing body of evidence that suggests otherwise. This paper argues that small states, like Malaysia, can still exercise agency when interacting with bigger states. Using the renegotiation of the East Coast Railway Link (ECRL) as a case study, this paper examines how Malaysia exercises its agency and elucidates several factors that increased Malaysia's bargaining power. First, Malaysia holds intrinsic value for China. Second, the ECRL's status as a key project in China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) lends it wider geopolitical significance. Third, the purpose of the ECRL as an alternative trade route creates a significant ongoing economic imperative for China to see the project concluded successfully. Furthermore, Malaysia's ability to cultivate positive relationships with other major powers through the adept political leadership of Mahathir increases the country's leverage.

This study examines China’s economic statecraft and its impact on regional integration, trade networks, and political alignments in Asia. it examines China's practices of economic leverage, including trade expansion, infrastructure development, investment flows and regional cooperation initiatives, such as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), to enhance its presence in Asia. This research uses qualitative approach with secondary data from scholarly articles, policy papers, institutional reports and credible online databases. Thematic analysis and qualitative content analysis were used to analyze the data and extract themes on economic connectivity, trade interdependence, political alignment and geopolitical competition. The results show that China is now a key node in the Asian economic architecture, greatly improving regional connectivity, trade integration and introducing economic vulnerabilities and security challenges to the smaller states. The research also confirms that the Chinese economic influence affects political attitudes among Asian countries, which results in balancing and hedging. Overall, the research shows that China's economic statecraft is a catalyst not only for regional economic development, but also for geopolitical complexity in the evolving regional order in Asia.

This research study, entitled as “Chinese FDI in Vietnam under Xi Jinping’s Policy in the 21st Century”, aims (1) to study Chinese FDI in Vietnam under Xi Jinping’s policy, and (2) to study the factors of Chinese FDI in Vietnam and the change on geo-economics. The strategy of Chinese FDI in Vietnam under Xi Jinping’s policy in the 21st century is a result of President Xi Jinping's announcement of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The strategy has evolved into partial cooperation between China and Vietnam, which is shaped by China's economic relations strategy with ASEAN. This extent will be a crucial driving force for China’s investment in Vietnam. Moreover, Vietnam has a high potential as a groundwork for investment, production, and export to other foreign countries. Since the factors of Chinese FDI in Vietnam and the change on geo-economics are involved with politics and economics, they have an impact on China's investment in Vietnam. The political factor has risen due to the policy of President Xi Jinping regarding the declaration of the BRI. Economic factor concerns the opening of new markets, the release of domestic supply, and the adjustment of international reserve funds by establishing the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). Meanwhile, China's open strategy towards foreign countries has brought its strategic investment policies in Vietnam closer together, as well as the economic interests of both countries. This may lead to a significant impact on economic and political relations between China and Vietnam in the future.