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China's Belt and Road Initiative: Views from the ground.

ABSTRACT: The Chinese government promotes the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) as a global strategy for regional integration and infrastructure investment. With a projected US$1 trillion commitment from Chinese financial institutions, and at least 138 countries participating, the BRI is attracting intense debate. Yet most analysis to date focuses on broad drivers, risks, and opportunities, largely considered to be emanating from a coherent policy imposed by Beijing. In this special issue, we instead examine the BRI as a relational, contested process - a bundle of intertwined discourses, policies, and projects that sometimes align but are sometimes contradictory. We move beyond policy-level, macro-economic, and classic geopolitical analysis to study China's global investments "from the ground". Our case studies reveal the BRI to be dynamic and unstable, rhetorically appropriated for different purposes that sometimes but do not always coalesce as a coherent geopolitical and geoeconomic strategy. The papers in this special issue provide one of the first collections of deep empirical work on the BRI and a useful approach for grounding China's role in globalization in the critical contexts of complex local realities.

SUBMITTER: Oliveira GLT

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7398643 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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China's Belt and Road Initiative: Views from the ground.

Oliveira Gustavo de L T GLT Murton Galen G Rippa Alessandro A Harlan Tyler T Yang Yang Y

Political geography 20200803

The Chinese government promotes the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) as a global strategy for regional integration and infrastructure investment. With a projected US$1 trillion commitment from Chinese financial institutions, and at least 138 countries participating, the BRI is attracting intense debate. Yet most analysis to date focuses on broad drivers, risks, and opportunities, largely considered to be emanating from a coherent policy imposed by Beijing. In this special issue, we instead examine ...[more]

PMID: 32836922

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Project description:This study evaluates the nexus of regional integration, socioeconomic determinants and sustainable development (SD) by investigating the effect of health, humans and age structure on sustainable development, with the regional integration (RI) as the moderating variable. Socioeconomic determinants have an important role in sustainable development, while regional integration has fueled up the development process. The sample is based on 64 Belt and Road (BRI) countries from 2003-2018. Pair-wise correlation results indicate that human development, health expenditure and age structure showed a positive relationship with sustainable development. Two-step System-GMM direct effect outcomes are mixed and reveal that human development, health expenditure per capita, age structure, governance index and population size have a positive impact on sustainable development. On the other hand, e-government, government size, and globalization showed negative effects on SD. Apart from that, the moderating channel of regional integration (RI), interaction term with human development and health expenditure, showed a significant and positive impact on sustainable development. However, age structure interaction with regional integration showed a negative impact on SD. Other socio-economic factors, i.e., governance index and population contribute positively towards SD. It can be concluded that the dynamic nature of sustainable development is positive and the net present value is increasing. Therefore, BRI countries are on the sustainable path from 2003-2018, as suggested by economic and social welfare theory. The integration of BRI can be labeled as an entrance to successful sustainable development. However, weak e-government systems, globalization and government resources need to be utilized amicably in Belt and Road countries. Driscoll-Kraay standard-errors regression confirmed and validated the two-step System-GMM results. The findings of the current research have important policy implications for balanced and sustainable growth.

Project description:Economic vulnerability is an important indicator to measure regional coordination, health and stability. Despite the importance of vulnerabilities, this is the first study that presents 26 indicators selected from the dimensions of the domestic economic system, external economic system and financial system in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) countries. A quantitative analysis is conducted to analyze the characteristics of spatial heterogeneity of vulnerability of the economic subsystems and the comprehensive economic system of the BRI countries and the main influencing factors of the comprehensive economic system vulnerability (CESV) are identified based on obstacle degree model. The results show that the CESV of the East Asia, South Asia and ASEAN countries are lower than that of the Middle Eastern Europe, Central Asia and West Asia countries. The CESV of the BRI countries are generally in the middle level and the average vulnerability index of highly vulnerable countries is twice as much as that of lowly vulnerable countries. In addition, in terms of the vulnerability of the three subsystems, the spatial distribution of vulnerability of the domestic economic system (DESV) and financial system (FSV) is basically consistent with the spatial distribution pattern of CESV, both of which are low in East Asia and South Asia and high in West Asia and Central Asia. While, the vulnerability of external economic system (EESV) shows a different spatial pattern, with vulnerability of West Asia, Central Asia and ASEAN higher than that of East Asia and South Asia. The main obstacle factors influencing the CESV of BRI countries include GDP growth rate, saving ratio, ratio of bank capital to assets, service industry level, industrialization level and loan rate. Therefore, the key way to maintain the stability and mitigate the vulnerability of the economic system of BRI countries is to focus on the macroeconomic development and operation, stimulate the economy and market vitality, promote the development of industries, especially the service and secondary industries, and optimize the economic structure, banking system and financial system.

Dataset Information

China's Belt and Road Initiative: Views from the ground.

Publications

China's Belt and Road Initiative: Views from the ground.

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