Negotiating the boundaries of China’s Belt and Road Initiative

This paper explores dynamic processes of (re)negotiation of boundaries of and in China’s Belt and Road Initiative. It identifies ambiguous temporal and spatial boundaries which create space for ongoing political and ideological contestation over the shape of the Belt and Road Initiative. The paper suggests that lack of clear geographical scope leaves open multiple futures for China’s global relations under the initiative. Chinese imaginaries hint at a world of transnational networks of political economy but one still structured by nation states and inter-governmental regional institutions at a time when the intertwining of the political and the economic is a feature of shifting configurations of global political economy.

[1]  J. Sidaway,et al.  Reordering China, Respacing the World: Belt and Road Initiative (一带一路) as an Emergent Geopolitical Culture , 2019, The Professional Geographer.

[2]  Alan Wiig,et al.  Turbulent presents, precarious futures: urbanization and the deployment of global infrastructure , 2019, Regional Studies.

[3]  T. Summers.  The Belt and Road Initiative and China’s Regions , 2018, China’s Regions in an Era of Globalization.

[4]  Andrew Grant.  China’s double body: infrastructure routes and the mapping of China’s nation-state and civilization-state , 2018 .

[5]  Veysel Tekdal.  China's Belt and Road Initiative: at the crossroads of challenges and ambitions , 2018 .

[6]  E. Yeh,et al.  Going West and Going Out: discourses, migrants, and models in Chinese development , 2016, The Geoeconomics and Geopolitics of Chinese Development and Investment in Asia.

[7]  B. Jessop,et al.  Geopolitics: Putting geopolitics in its place in cultural political economy , 2017 .

[8]  M. Kaczmarski.  Two Ways of Influence-building: The Eurasian Economic Union and the One Belt, One Road Initiative , 2017 .

[9]  J. Glassman,et al.  Geopolitical economy and the production of territory: The case of US–China geopolitical-economic competition in Asia , 2017 .

[10]  J. Sidaway,et al.  Chinese Narratives on “One Belt, One Road” (一带一路) in Geopolitical and Imperial Contexts , 2017 .

[11]  Zhang Yunling.  China and its neighbourhood: transformation, challenges and grand strategy , 2016 .

[12]  Katherine Morton,et al.  China's ambition in the South China Sea: is a legitimate maritime order possible? , 2016 .

[13]  Peter Ferdinand,et al.  Westward ho—the China dream and ‘one belt, one road’: Chinese foreign policy under Xi Jinping , 2016 .

[14]  Tim Summers,et al.  China’s ‘New Silk Roads’: sub-national regions and networks of global political economy , 2016 .

[15]  Yong Wang,et al.  Offensive for defensive: the belt and road initiative and China's new grand strategy , 2016 .