Geopolitical Implications of the Belt and Road Initiative: The Backbone for a New World Order?

Over 2,000 years ago, China’s imperial envoy Zhang Qian contributed to establish what would later became known as the Silk Road. Composed by an intricated network of trade routes, the road connected China to Europe and Africa and the Arab world running across Central Asia. In 2013, China’s president, Xi Jinping, during a visit to Kazakhstan, announced the launch of a new initiative aiming at creating a modern equivalent of the original Silk Road. The initiative that now goes under the name of One Belt One Road (OBOR) or Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is much more complex than the original Silk Road, and focuses on the creation of six main corridors to establish a network of land and maritime routes. The initiative is focused on ironing out regional gaps through a combination of economic measures and infrastructural works, including railways, roads, pipelines, ports and logistic hubs, to streamline the flows of goods, people, money, ideas and cultures, transiting through Asia, China, Europe and Africa. Over 60 countries are involved in the BRI, covering a total of 70 percent of World’s population with an estimated cost ranging around USD 6 trillion. China frames the raison d'être of the OBOR initiative within a mainly economic perspective, as part of its regional integration programs aimed at streamlining trade routes in and out of China, to maximize the efficiency of the outlets for China’s manufacturing sector, while also kick-starting the development of several of the less developed Southeast and Central Asian countries involved in the initiative, with the end goal to promote and stabilize China’s economic growth across the globe. However, it appears clear that an initiative having such a broad geographic and economic scope cannot avoid crossing over the mere province of economics, to stray into the domains of geopolitics and geo-economics, providing China with opportunities for economic growth, but also more political and economic leverage both regionally and globally, as well as a unique opportunity to use such leverage to change or challenge the existing international order either from the inside or, if necessary, through the creation of an external alternative order. This paper explores this complex topic, providing an insight into the deeper geopolitical and geo-economic aspects of the Belt and Road Initiative and what they may mean for the current global order