Far from Random: Decoding the Geopolitics of the Belt and Road Initiative

Abstract

What does B&RI stand for? Ten years after Chinese President Xi Jinping unveiled the “Silk Road Economic Belt” (September, 2013) at Astana’s Nazarbayev University in Kazakhstan and announced the “21st-Century Maritime Silk Road Development Strategy” in an address to the Indonesian House of Representatives (October, 2013), it seems to be the right time to decode its geopolitical rationale. Both declarations were initially part of the same initiative designated as the “one belt, one road” (一带一路) strategy, but were later (in 2015) modified and turned into the “Belt and Road Initiative” (B&RI), with emphasis on “initiative” rather than on "one" or "strategy" (although currently in China, “one belt, one road” is still frequently seen in public communication).