ABSTRACT
The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is perhaps the most ambitious geo-economics vision in recent history launched by China in 2013. It intends to strengthen hard infrastructure with new roads and railways, soft infrastructure with trade and transportation agreements, and even cultural ties with university scholarships and other people-to-people exchanges.
The West Asia and North Africa (WANA) region occupies a central place in the vision of BRI because of abundance of hydrocarbon resources in the region which would be a catalyst in the success story of the BRI. The WANA has its strategic location between three important seas—the Mediterranean, Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, which are of vital importance for China’s trade and oil routes. China’s long, traditional cooperation with the WANA region focuses on energy, but is politically based on foreign policies and principles similar to those pertaining to other countries. The BRI provides a new dynamic for deepening cooperation with the Arab world, as the traditional economic relations remain in the energy and daily-necessity goods sectors. Through the BRI, a new framework of cooperation was set up, based on energy cooperation, infrastructure building and tradeinvestment, and nuclear power industry, space satellites and new types of energy.
In the light of the above, this paper will primarily look into the brief history of the BRI and will also explore how this mega project aims to integrate the major parts of the world in its ambit of 242trade and commerce. The principle objective of this paper revolves around the critical examination of the engagement of the BRI with the Arab world and how it would benefit the region and in what way China’s outreach to the Arab world will equally help China in its pursuit of this mission because of abundance of oil and gas in the region.
