Editors' Words: Introduction to the Special Issue

• Published date: 01 September 2017
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/cwe.12210
• Date: 01 September 2017
• Author: Giovanni B. Andornino,Giorgio Prodi

©2017 Institute of World Economics and Politics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences

China & World Economy / 1–3, Vol. 25, No. 5, 2017

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Editors’ Words: Introduction to the Special Issue

Giovanni B. Andornino, Giorgio Prodi*

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is increasingly regarded as Beijing’s most ambitious

foreign policy proposition since Deng Xiaoping set China on a path of reform, opening

up and maintaining a low prole in international aairs in the early 1980s. While it is

still in the process of being fully articulated, the BRI may be viewed as an overarching

political vision conferring strategic quality to a set of policy streams that aim to advance

transregional multilayered connectivity across Eurasia and Africa, and thereby establish

a dynamic of development cross-acceleration between these regions and China.

Officially espoused by President Xi Jinping in 2013, this initiative, also known

as One Belt One Road, is premised on the twin needs for China to extend the window

of opportunity for pursuing the next phase in its process of national rejuvenation, and

to reduce its exposure to the competitive pressures that have mounted in East Asia

following Washington’s re-balancing to the Pacic. The core value proposition of this

“Pan-Peripheral Strategy” is for China to “make full use of its unusual status as a ‘state

in the middle’, relying on Asia – not merely East Asia – as its geostrategic foundation”

and serving as a bridge between East and West, as well as between the Global North and

South.1

The remarkable economics of the BRI, as well as China’s growing influence on

global discursive agendas, are reflected in the pervasiveness of debates on the BRI,

both within China and internationally. This Special Issue seeks to contribute to this

conversation by examining how governments, epistemic communities and the general

public across key countries in the Eurasian continent perceive and react to China’s BRI.

Giovanni Andornino’s and Giuseppe Gabusi’s opening essays approach the BRI

from a systemic perspective. Andornino argues that a lexicographic preference for the

mitigation of the risk of assertive containment underpins the Chinese Government’s

unusually high-profile pursuit of connective leadership through the BRI. He finds

that Beijing’s encapsulation of the BRI policies for transregional connectivity into

China’s national development strategy generates a hierarchical, non-hegemonic,

*Giovanni B. Andornino, Assistant Professor, Department of Culture, Politics and Society, University

of Torino, Italy. Email: giovanni.andornino@unito.it; Giorgio Prodi, Associate Professor, Department of

Economics and Management, Ferrara University, Italy. Email: giorgio.prodi@unife.it.

1Wang, J., 2015, “China in the Middle,” The American Interest, Vol. 10, No. 4, pp. 1–7.