What does the Belt and Road Initiative mean for the existing multilateral organisations? What can it represent for the future of the European Union in the long run? What is the role of hard and soft law in the functioning of the Initiative? What does it represent from a legal theory perspective? This book aspires to contribute to the international debate by gathering scholars with different backgrounds (legal theorists, public international lawyers, comparative lawyers) in a way that they can offer their inputs and observations concerning the Belt and Road Initiative.

This book showcases how the People's Republic of China (PRC) has been utilizing the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) to reshape the global order. Dissecting China's increasingly assertive international behaviour, the book demonstrates how the PRC projects its self-perception onto the international order. The book outlines five aspects of China's international role projection, which the PRC applies selectively, depending on its target audience: (1) The bearer of traditional Chinese culture; (2) The humiliated nation; (3) The socialist state with Chinese characteristics; (4) The developing state and promoter of international development; (5) The authoritarian globalization optimist.Drawing on an in-depth analysis of hundreds of primary BRI documents, the book offers a comprehensive overview of China's most crucial foreign policy agenda item. It demonstrates how, through the BRI, the PRC has introduced mechanisms to the international level, which reflect its domestic policy-making mode. In addition, the PRC has institutionalized the initiative by establishing China-centered BRI networks across a wide range of policy areas. Within those emerging China-centered BRI networks, the PRC systematically increases its international discursive power, for example, by inserting Chinese vocabulary into UN resolutions or by promoting Beijing's approaches vis-à-vis 'the rule of law' across a range of developing states. This book also further discusses the implications of the BRI for the international legal order.

This book is an analysis of the developments associated with the Belt and Road Initiative (B&RI) five years after Xi Jinping announced both the Silk Road Economic Belt (SREB) and the 21st Maritime Silk Road (21MSR). Together, these two dimensions constitute the B&RI, providing the so-called Chinese ‘project of the century’ with regional, inter-regional and global reach. This book aims at assessing the impact of the B&RI in all these dimensions and levels of influence. This is a current and promising theme, not only in the short and medium terms, but also within a broader timescale, reflecting Chinese strategic thinking itself, since Chinese philosophy and culture are oriented towards long-term and inter-generational perspectives. Likewise, both the title of this publication and the way it has been organized result from the empirical perception that China asserts a conservative attitude towards foreign affairs, redesigned in multiple dimensions, to create a perception of domestic unity and global prestige. In this vein of thought, the B&RI is already influencing and will continue to influence, directly or indirectly, the current economic and political order.

This timely Research Handbook investigates the radically transformative impact of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), addressing key questions regarding its economic, political and strategic consequences: what does the Chinese government hope to achieve with the BRI? How have recipient states responded? And what are its potential opportunities and risks?

Written by eminent international judges, scholars and practitioners, this book offers a timely study of China's role in international dispute resolution in the context of the construction of the 'Belt and Road Initiative' (BRI). It provides in-depth analysis of the law and practice in the fields of international trade, commerce, investment and international law of the sea, as they relate to the BRI construction. It is the first comprehensive assessment of China's policy and practice in international dispute resolution, in general and in individual fields, in the context of the BRI construction. This book will be an indispensable reading for scholars and practitioners with interest in China and international dispute resolution. It also constitutes an invaluable reference for anyone interested in the changing international law and order, in which China is playing an increasingly significant role, particularly through the BRI construction.

Officially announced by Xi Jinping in 2013, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has since become the centrepiece of China’s economic diplomacy. It is a commitment to ease bottlenecks to Eurasian trade by improving and building networks of connectivity across Central and Western Asia, where the BRI aims to act as a bond for the projects of regional cooperation and integration already in progress in Southern Asia. But it also reaches out to the Middle East as well as East and North Africa, a truly strategic area where the Belt joins the Road. Europe, the end-point of the New Silk Roads, both by land and by sea, is the ultimate geographic destination and political partner in the BRI. This report provides an in-depth analysis of the BRI, its logic, rationale and implications for international economic and political relations.

This book provides insights into China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) from Asia Pacific and the Middle East. It offers critical perspectives from various directions, not excluding historical investigations, human geography approaches and neo-Marxist inclinations. China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) represents one of the biggest geopolitical visions since the Cold War and offers the possibilities of an intercontinental vision of Aid politics, along with prospects for pan-Asianism. By and large, any geopolitical vision that purports to foster inter-regional dialogue and materialist development of peoples and economies is bound to have its flaws. The Belt and Road Initiative bears hallmarks of the socio-political tradition of Chinese authoritarian infrastructure politics while also offering a possible alternative to the so-called ‘Washington Consensus’ of free markets, deregulation and a shift towards liberal democracy. Additionally, the Belt and Road Initiative opens up wide open intellectual spaces for dialogues between Asians, Arabs and Westerners on the meaning of inclusive inter-continental relationships in philosophy, geography and economics. The significance of this is often underplayed in Chinese official statements whereas this book introduces these possibilities within its assorted sections. “The book is about much more than the material aspects of China’s Belt and Road Initiative. In fact, various chapter authors use the Belt and Road to look at perhaps the most fundamental issue of our times: how does one build a global world order and societies that are inclusive, cohesive and capable of managing interests of all stakeholders as well as political, cultural, ethnic and religious differences in ways that all are recognized without prejudice and/or discrimination?” —Prof. James Dorsey, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore