One Belt, One Road – China’s new grand strategy

Christian Ploberger

Journal of Chinese Economic and Business Studies, 2017, vol. 15, issue 3, 289-305

Abstract: Does the ‘One Belt, One Road (OBOR) initiative’ represent a mere nostalgic rhetoric, summing up a wider range of policy initiatives, based on two different regional levels, or is it a bold statement of China’s new geopolitical grand strategy? In its geographic focus the ‘OBOR initiative’ comprises locations which are already within the Chinese government’s focus of interest – Central Asia and Southeast Asia with an extension to Europe, as a primary destination for its exports. Consequently, the ‘OBOR initiative’ can be viewed as a framework of existing political-economic interests of the Chinese government that are aligned to a wide range of different policy proposals. Following such a line of argument one may understand OBOR as the emergence of various processes of regional and sub-regional integration dynamics in which the Chinese leadership will take a more active role. Conversely, one may emphasise the qualitative and explicit adaptions within the ‘OBOR initiative’ that constitutes China’s contemporary geopolitical grand strategy. A final salient point that is demonstrated here, is that this initiative shows that geography continues to shape geopolitics even though we are living in a supposed globalised world.

Date: 2017
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/14765284.2017.1346922 (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:taf:jocebs:v:15:y:2017:i:3:p:289-305

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RCEA20

DOI: 10.1080/14765284.2017.1346922

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Chinese Economic and Business Studies is currently edited by Professor Xiaming Liu

More articles in Journal of Chinese Economic and Business Studies from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().