ABSTRACT
This chapter first analyses the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) both as Chinese investment projects and as a geopolitical strategy. It then examines China’s geo-economic manoeuvring in its use of the BRI and in international relations more generally, as well as the so-called ‘decoupling strategy’ in the geopolitical and geo-economic struggle. This chapter concludes that China’s rise has, so far, proven to mount the most serious challenge to the existing liberal international economic order, and there is as yet no sign of the end of the geopolitical struggle between China and the existing powers led by the US.
