ABSTRACT
Scholars and media may miss the key point when discussing the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and attribute it to a certain or single objective. According to the official statement, the BRI is a major and long-term vision of open development that the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee and the State Council have proposed to coordinate the overall domestic and international situation. The past 30 years have witnessed major changes in the global socioeconomic context that, from a world perspective, are mainly driven by economic globalization. Moreover, since the global financial crisis in 2008, China’s contribution to world economic growth has remained around 30 percent on average. In brief, the dramatic increase in China’s outward foreign direct investment (FDI) over the past decade may be largely driven by four factors. China, as already the second-largest economy in the world, is in increasing need of natural resources to secure its social and economic development.
