18 December 2022

China's Belt and Road Initiative: A Geopolitical and Geo-economic Assessment


The IISS Strategic Dossier China’s Belt and Road Initiative provides a geopolitical and geo-economic assessment of President Xi Jinping’s flagship foreign-policy initiative. The dossier explores the Belt and Road Initiative’s (BRI) role in China’s domestic industrial strategy and in the country’s growing influence around the world.

China's Belt and Road Initiative studies how Beijing’s ambitions as well as management and financing of the initiative have evolved since its launch in 2013. In addition, the volume reflects on the initiative’s future following the coronavirus pandemic.

Key features

Includes three thematic chapters. A strategy chapter charts the evolution of Beijing’s geo-economic and geopolitical ambitions for the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), and how it has used the initiative to increase its economic security and to pursue ambitions in different industries over time. A management chapter examines how Beijing’s control of the initiative has evolved in response to domestic and international pressures. And a financing chapter looks at how conditions in the wider Chinese economy have motivated and constrained the flow of funds for Chinese lending and investment overseas.

Provides a region-by-region assessment of what Beijing has sought to achieve in different countries and how the BRI has played out over time, with sections on North and Central Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Oceania, Latin America and the Caribbean, Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and North Africa, and Europe – and a chapter comparing how the initiative has adapted and borne out in the different regions. It analyses how the initiative has interacted with national and regional politics around the world.

The dossier also evaluates responses from other global and regional powers to China’s economic activities around the world and offers thoughts on ways the West might better contend with Beijing’s geo-economic influence.

Over 100 bespoke, full-colour graphics, including maps, graphs and charts, and over 100 colour images.

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