ABSTRACT
The chapter assesses ten supposedly key characteristics of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) drawn from a deep reading of official publications, scholarly works and media outputs. The analysis, conducted by applying the complex eclecticism conceptual tools to the ten purported characteristics, confirms that a key aspect of the BRI is its focus on connectivity, transport and energy infrastructure in over 60 Asian and European countries. However, given the complex interconnections between countries and regions, the division of the BRI into overland and maritime routes is revealed to be mainly an ideational construct rather than a material reality. A similar conclusion is reached concerning the BRI’s six economic ‘corridors’. Indeed, ideational factors relating to ensuring regime legitimacy domestically and normative power abroad are prevalent in much of the presentation and application of the BRI, which includes oft-repeated slogans about ‘win-win cooperation’ and a ‘community of shared destiny’. Nevertheless, there is evidence of the presence of material factors as well, especially in terms of China’s rising economic power and attempts to address economic development in the global South through increased interdependence between BRI countries. Xi Jinping’s flagship foreign policy initiative should be understood as an ideational as well as material construct within which an increasingly complex network of institutional practices take shape and intersect.
