Prioritizing China’s public policy options in developing logistics infrastructure under the Belt and Road Initiative

Ying Wang and Chien-Chang Chou ()
Additional contact information
Ying Wang: Yantai University
Chien-Chang Chou: National Kaohsiung University of Science and Technology

Maritime Economics & Logistics, 2020, vol. 22, issue 2, No 7, 293-307

Abstract: Abstract One of the aims of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), proposed by China in 2013, is to promote the development of logistics along corridor countries by eliminating trade barriers between countries along the corridor and by advancing the construction of port infrastructure and related facilities to improve maritime logistics. Financial integration, people-to-people bonds, policy coordination, facilities connectivity, and unimpeded trade are five major enabling factors of the BRI for enhancing logistics cooperation and service level among corridor countries. This paper aims to evaluate the importance of these factors, which allegedly influence logistics infrastructure development, from the perspective of public policy. The consistent fuzzy preference relations (CFPR) method is employed to determine the prioritization of the five logistics-enabling factors. Our results show that the factor unimpeded trade is ranked first, while the factor people-to-people bonds is ranked last. To further analyze the results, cross-sectional analysis between government officers and academics is conducted to clearly identify their preferences as well as differences of opinion. As expected, government officers prefer more of the factor policy coordination, while academics ascribe more importance to the factor unimpeded trade. Our findings can advise the Chinese government, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), and other corridor countries on how to prioritize their investments in order to develop logistics infrastructure and ensure the successful implementation of the BRI.

Keywords: Maritime logistics; Belt and road; Unimpeded trade; Facilities connectivity; Fuzzy theory; Consistent fuzzy preference relation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1057/s41278-019-00143-5 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:marecl:v:22:y:2020:i:2:d:10.1057_s41278-019-00143-5

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... nt/journal/41278/PS2

DOI: 10.1057/s41278-019-00143-5

Access Statistics for this article

Maritime Economics & Logistics is currently edited by Hercules E. Haralambides

More articles in Maritime Economics & Logistics from Palgrave Macmillan, International Association of Maritime Economists (IAME) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().