ABSTRACT
This chapter offers a critical perspective on the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Since its inception, there have been many criticisms of the endeavour, as well as cancelled projects and inadequate reliable data. Propaganda for the initiative has not been very effective at mobilising the project as a form of soft power beyond China’s borders. This has limited its success as an international geopolitical project, though it has been more successful in some cultural fields, such as increased interest in the historic ‘silk roads’, which often adhere to a Sino-centric narrative. This chapter argues that the initiative’s greatest ‘successes’ have been internally directed: the project is mobilised within nationalist discourses allowing the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to represent itself as a geopolitical power to its own population. The project is thus best understood as a nationalist, rather than internationalist one. We expand this point by turning to the interconnection between the BRI and the securitisation of Xinjiang, where the project is linked to accusations of crimes against humanity, such as forced labour.
