ABSTRACT
The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), set up after Xi Jinping’s visit to Kazakhstan and Indonesia in September and October 2013 respectively, is likely to redefine China’s international development identity. China’s development identity of the past 40 plus years after 1978 was broadly considered as developmental. As an analogy, China was basically picking up those low-hanging fruits, copying economic development patterns experienced by many East Asian economies, resulting in safe and low-risk manufacturing and production. However, after 2015, the ‘new normal’ (lower growth rate) inevitably pushed China to move up and started searching for some high-hanging fruits, which requires innovation, creativity, risk taking, and most importantly entrepreneurial spirit. This chapter tries to tentatively illustrate the competitive nature between developing and developed economies, to illustrate the dynamics of economic transformation of China. Second, from receiving foreign direct investment to using ‘go out’ strategies, China’s outward foreign direct investment along the BRI began the search for new development opportunities. In addition, in terms of international financial aspect, Chinese currency internationalization and the BRI allow one to probe the next level of international financial integration. Finally, technological change and the protection of innovation through intellectual property rights may allow the BRI to be more experimental and to test the potential and possibilities of inclusiveness and technology sharing.
