ABSTRACT
The China-led Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has been arguably the most significant global-scale infrastructure investment since the post-Second World War reconstruction of war-ravaged Europe and Asia. The rise of China represents a potential new Cold War rivalry with a different, competing political ideology akin to the previous one with Soviet Communism, but this time with China’s one-party dictatorship. Reinforcing the context dependency approach, the last point focuses on how the specific project has been represented and, hence, perceived by the local media and the internal debates on the project’s viability and benefits. A key divergence from past practices of globalisation is that the BRI focuses on public hard infrastructure. BRI-induced globalisation reflects the power of trade and scale which leads to increasing returns and economic growth. The efficiency of international trade relates to technological diffusion which is consistent with the BRI’s focus on rail infrastructure investments for regional and international connectivity and integration.
