ABSTRACT
Since 2013, the Xi Jinping administration’s ‘One Belt, One Road’ concept – or Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) – has emerged as China’s principal foreign policy directive. Chinese senior leaders and diplomats now regularly cite the BRI as both the model and rationale for China’s engagement with states as near abroad as Mongolia and as far afield as the United Kingdom. China’s primary foreign policy institutions, including the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA), and the Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM), have also internalized BRI engagement in their developmental and outreach models, per President Xi’s directives. In parallel, the BRI has become the focal point of a flood of Chinese and English language scholarship and media reporting on China’s foreign affairs. The BRI, in short, has assumed its place in the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) pantheon of foreign policy engagement strategies, alongside such concepts as Deng Xiaoping’s ‘Reform and Open’ policy and Hu Jintao’s ‘Peaceful Rise/Development’ strategy.
