TY - JOUR
T1 - Will Trump make China great again? The belt and road initiative and international order
AU - Nordin, Astrid H.M.
AU - Weissmann, Mikael
N1 - Funding Information:
* This research was funded by a grant from the Marianne and Marcus Wallenberg Foundation (MMW 2013.0162). For comments that helped to develop and refine the article, the authors would also like to thank Linus Hagström, Björn Jerdén, L. H. M. Ling, participants at the World International Studies Conference 2017 and three anonymous reviewers. 1 Author’s interview with Chinese academic, Sept. 2017. 2 William A. Callahan, China dreams: 20 visions of the future (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013); Astrid H. M. Nordin, China’s international relations and harmonious world: time, space and multiplicity in world politics (Abing-don and New York: Routledge, 2016); Peter Ferdinand, ‘Westward ho—the China dream and “one belt, one road”: Chinese foreign policy under Xi Jinping’, International Affairs 92: 4, July 2016, pp. 941–57.
Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2018. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Royal Institute of International Affairs. All rights reserved.
PY - 2018/3/1
Y1 - 2018/3/1
N2 - Under President Xi Jinping's leadership, Chinese foreign relations have moved from keeping a low profile, to a more assertive bid for international leadership that is beginning to take form in the 'belt and road initiative' (BRI). This initiative focuses on connectivity in policy coordination, facilities, trade, finance and people-to-people relations, in order to connect China to key parts of Asia, the south Pacific, east Africa and Europe. Networked capitalism and the national unit, which are often seen as spatial opposites in the global political economy, are both exercised through the BRI in mutually supporting ways. Networked capitalism is not challenging the national spatial unit, nor vice versa. Rather, they conglomerate to reinforce Chinese government narratives which portray China as the new trailblazer of global capitalism-thus illustrating and justifying a new Sinocentric order in east Asia. Likely winners of this constellation, if it is successful, are megalopolises in Eurasia, and most of all the Chinese Communist Party. Likely losers are countries that are not included in the BRI, most notably the United States. In a context where President Donald Trump is signalling a more protectionist stance and the United States is withdrawing from free trade pacts like the Trans-Pacific Partnership, Trump may ironically enable Xi's dream of making China great again.
AB - Under President Xi Jinping's leadership, Chinese foreign relations have moved from keeping a low profile, to a more assertive bid for international leadership that is beginning to take form in the 'belt and road initiative' (BRI). This initiative focuses on connectivity in policy coordination, facilities, trade, finance and people-to-people relations, in order to connect China to key parts of Asia, the south Pacific, east Africa and Europe. Networked capitalism and the national unit, which are often seen as spatial opposites in the global political economy, are both exercised through the BRI in mutually supporting ways. Networked capitalism is not challenging the national spatial unit, nor vice versa. Rather, they conglomerate to reinforce Chinese government narratives which portray China as the new trailblazer of global capitalism-thus illustrating and justifying a new Sinocentric order in east Asia. Likely winners of this constellation, if it is successful, are megalopolises in Eurasia, and most of all the Chinese Communist Party. Likely losers are countries that are not included in the BRI, most notably the United States. In a context where President Donald Trump is signalling a more protectionist stance and the United States is withdrawing from free trade pacts like the Trans-Pacific Partnership, Trump may ironically enable Xi's dream of making China great again.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85043677908&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1093/ia/iix242
DO - 10.1093/ia/iix242
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85043677908
SN - 0020-5850
VL - 94
SP - 231
EP - 249
JO - International Affairs
JF - International Affairs
IS - 2
ER -
