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Introduction

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China’s Belt and Road Vision

Part of the book series: Global Power Shift ((GLOBAL))

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Abstract

The introductory chapter summarises the historical background of the Silk Road construct and how, since 2013, China’s Leader, Xi Jinping, has used this framework to pursue an initiative comprising terrestrial and maritime connectivity, infrastructure building, trade, regulatory coordination and financial convergence between China on the one hand, and the rest of Eurasia, Europe, Africa, Oceania and Latin America, on the other. The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), specifically its globe-girdling scale, massive funding outlays, alleged lack of transparency and purported geostrategic motives concealed beneath its geoeconomic garb, deepened China-rooted anxiety among members of the US-led coalition being forged to counteract the ‘China threat’ said to be challenging the ‘rules-based’ post-Cold War global order. Intensifying Sino-US strategic rivalry painted a contextual backdrop for the polarised BRI discourse, reinforcing dialectic dynamics powering the transitional fluidity afflicting the system.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Blackwill (2018) and Blackwill and Harris (2016).

  2. 2.

    Voisin (2017), Liu (2012) and Hopkirk (1984).

  3. 3.

    Afghanistan, Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belarus, Bhutan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brunei, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Croatia, Czech Republic, Egypt, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Latvia, Lebanon, Lithuania, Macedonia, Malaysia, Maldives, Moldova, Mongolia, Montenegro, Myanmar, Nepal, Oman, Pakistan, Palestine, Philippines, Poland, Qatar, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sri Lanka, Syria, Tajikistan, Thailand, Timor-Leste, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, Yemen. Government of the PRC (2017); six months later, the list was expanded to include Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya and South Korea. Hurley et al. (2018, pp. 6–7).

  4. 4.

    Hurley et al. (2018, p. 1).

  5. 5.

    Report (2019).

  6. 6.

    Trump (2018).

  7. 7.

    Pence (2018).

  8. 8.

    Coats (2019, p. 25).

  9. 9.

    Pompeo (2018).

  10. 10.

    OSD (2018a).

  11. 11.

    OSD (2018a).

  12. 12.

    Xi (2018).

  13. 13.

    Pottinger (2018).

  14. 14.

    Sevastopulo (2019), Pence (2018), OSD (2018b), Coats (2018), Mattis (2018) and NSC (2017).

  15. 15.

    White House (2017a, b, c), Han and Sink (2017), Matsui et al. (2017), Yoshino (2017), PTI (2017) and Akbar (2017).

  16. 16.

    Wu (2017).

  17. 17.

    FMPRC (2017).

  18. 18.

    Cavanna (2018), White (2017), Tellis (2017), Blanchard and Flint (2017), Ploberger (2017), Nye (2017), Clarke (2017) and Phillips (2017).

  19. 19.

    Report (2015) and Chin and He (2016, pp. 1–2).

  20. 20.

    Chin and He (2016, pp. 2–4).

  21. 21.

    Chaudhury (2017) and Report (2017b).

  22. 22.

    Kono and Iwaya (2019).

  23. 23.

    Chin and He (2016, pp. 5–6).

  24. 24.

    Pi et al. (2017).

  25. 25.

    Report (2018), Editorial (2018) and Shen and Chan (2018).

  26. 26.

    Peng and Jia (2017).

  27. 27.

    Xinhua (2017).

  28. 28.

    Zhou (2017) and Report (2017a).

  29. 29.

    Pi et al. (2017).

  30. 30.

    Coats (2019, pp. 4–5, 7, 9, 14–17, 20–22, 24–26, 28, 35), OSD (2018b, pp. i, v–vi, 2–3, 6–7, 11, 24, 31–32, 34–37, 2019), Coats (2018, pp 4–7, 12–13, 15, 18), Mattis (2018, pp. 1–4, 6, 9) and NSC (2017, pp. 2–3, 25–27, 35, 45–47).

  31. 31.

    US Senate (2018).

  32. 32.

    Georgieva (2019). Emphases in original.

  33. 33.

    Gu and Ohnesorge (2019), Dervis (2018) and Hoge (2004).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Institute of China Studies, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

    S. Mahmud Ali

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  1. S. Mahmud Ali
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Correspondence to S. Mahmud Ali .

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Ali, S.M. (2020). Introduction. In: China’s Belt and Road Vision. Global Power Shift. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36244-7_1

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