• Korea Trade Review
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• v.46 no.3
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• pp.1-24
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• 2021

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is designed to intensify bilateral trade between China and the BRI countries through the improvement of transportation connections. However, little research has empirically investigated the impacts of this policies on the trade patterns. This paper attempts to evaluate the impacts of BRI on the trade patterns of Tanzania. Our study extends the original gravity model of bilateral trade by adding GDP per capita, population and proximity as the explanatory variables. According to our research, we observed that the BRI significantly impacted the Tanzania's trade patterns, as it led to the increase of bilateral trade flow between Tanzania and China more importantly between Tanzania and its adjacent countries. It indicates that the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has boosted Tanzania's trade exclusively, hence the Tanzania's export sector earns greater trading potential with the adjacent countries.

• Korea Trade Review
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• v.47 no.6
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• pp.307-333
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• 2022

In recent years, the outward foreign direct investment (oFDI) in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) by Chinese companies has significantly increased in size and changed in content. However, changes in the oFDI patterns between the pre- and post-BRI periods have not received sufficient attention from academia despite their theoretical and strategic significance. This paper reviewed existing research to establish seven hypotheses on changes in the oFDI patterns of Chinese companies investing in BRI countries and conducted empirical analyses to test the hypotheses using secondary data. The results showed that after the BRI agreement, Chinese oFDI in BRI countries was more active in less economically and less institutionally developed countries, that the oFDI by privately-owned enterprises (POEs) increased more than that of state-owned enterprises (SOEs), and that SOEs were more active in the social overhead capital (SOC) area while POEs were more active in the non-SOC area. The paper concludes with a summary, implications, and future research directions.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.229-238
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• 2022

The goal of this research is to look at the Belt and Road Initiative's (BRI) goals, principles, and priorities, as well as criticisms and concerns. Another goal is to determine the Vietnamese government's best response to the BRI. Finally, the study looks at the Vietnamese viewpoint. Document review is used in conjunction with PESTELED analysis and EIU country risk model technique in this study. The study is focused on in-depth interviews with 38 top government leaders, researchers, and scholars by adopting the Delphi technique to determine major factors of risks and opportunities as well as obtain a clearer view on the Vietnamese perspective of the BRI. The main conclusion is that Vietnam's participation in the BRI could result in a variety of benefits and risks, including economic development, connectivity and integration, development finance, cooperation, coordination, trade facilitation, and people-to-people communication, as well as diplomatic and political risks, financial risks, environmental challenges, and job creation. Another conclusion is suggested that careful and case-by-case negotiation with China is needed for Vietnam to exploit the future benefits of BRI. There is a need to set up the strategy to mitigate the risk impacts, reduce the risk level, avoid risk, at last turn the risk into opportunities.

• Acta Via Serica
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.91-118
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• 2021

China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is China's contribution to the need for the world to collectively address deficits of peace, development, governance, and problems relating to climate, the environment and human health. The rise of China and the BRI do challenge the current 'rules-based global order' and the economic dominance and moral, political, economic, and cultural leadership of the United States and its allies. However, China's goal is not hegemony but a multipolar world in which common values coexist with principles of peaceful coexistence (including non-interference in the internal affairs of sovereign states). The evolution of the BRI is outlined, and the ways in which it reflects Chinese interests are summarized, including its roles in addressing natural resource dependence and excess capacity, a transition from investment promotion and factor-intensive growth to going out and industrial upgrading, going West, and the effective deployment of China's foreign exchange assets. Although China does therefore potentially gain, the BRI is designed so that partners also gain in a quest for win-win co-operation and mutual benefit. The values that underlie this approach and the call for a community with a shared future are compared with competing western values, whose roots lie in Enlightenment thought and are associated with a record of colonialism and imperialism. In this light, the article concludes with a consideration of the global implications of the BRI, the challenges it confronts and the likelihood that the unipolar moment will give way to a multipolar global development path.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.8 no.11
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• pp.145-155
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• 2021

This study examines the export competitiveness of four major natural rubber exporters in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) region and investigates the factors affecting bilateral natural rubber export. This study utilized the revealed symmetric comparative advantage (RSCA) to measure export competitiveness. Next, this study employed the gravity model using the Poisson Pseudo Maximum Likelihood (PPML) estimation to analyze the factors affecting bilateral export from the four major natural rubber exporters to 46 countries in the region. The analysis is conducted by using annual data from 2001 till 2018. The findings showed that all four major exporters maintained their export competitiveness. Indonesia and Vietnam notably exhibited increasing trends in the early 2000s. Besides, the market share for Malaysia and Vietnam have increased from 2013 to 2015 with the BRI implementation in 2013. In addition, this study discovered that non-tariff measures (NTM) have a positive and significant impact on the bilateral export of natural rubber. The overall findings strongly indicate that the natural rubber export has increased post BRI announcement. The outcome highlighted the benefits of BRI implementation on the natural rubber export. This study is the first attempt to apply the gravity model on the natural rubber exports within the BRI region.

• Strategy21
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• s.37
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• pp.104-143
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• 2015

China's new grand strategy, the "One Belt, One Road Initiative" (also Belt Road Initiative, or BRI) has two primary components: Chinese President Xi Jinping announced the "Silk Road Economic Belt" in September 2013 during a visit to Kazakhstan, and the "21^st Century Maritime Silk Route Economic Belt" in a speech to the Indonesian parliament the following month. The BRI is intended to supply China with energy and new markets, and also to integrate the countries of Central Asia, the Association of Southeast Asia Nations (ASEAN), and the Indian Ocean Region - though not Northeast Asia - into the "Chinese Dream". The project will be supported by the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), due to open in 2016 with 57 founding members from all around the world, and China has already promised US$ 50 billion in seed funding. China's vision includes networks of energy pipelines, railways, sea port facilities and logistics hubs; these will have obvious commercial benefits, but also huge geopolitical significance. China seems to have two distinct aims: externally, to restore its historical sphere of influence; and internally, to cope with income inequalities by creating middle-class jobs through enhanced trade and the broader development of its economy. In South Korea, opinion on the BRI is sharply polarized. Economic and industrial interests, including Korea Railroad Corporation (KORAIL), support South Korean involvement in the BRI and closer economic interactions with China. They see how the BRI fits nicely with President Park Geun-hye's Eurasia Initiative, and anticipate significant commercial benefits for South Korea from better connections to energy-rich Russia and the consumer markets of Europe and Central Asia. They welcome the prospect of reduced trade barriers between China and South Korea, and of improved transport infrastructure, and perceive the political risks as manageable. But some ardently pro-US pundits worry that the political risks of the BRI are too high. They cast doubt on the feasibility of implementing the BRI, and warn that although it has been portrayed primarily in economic terms, it actually reveals a crucial Chinese geopolitical strategy. They are fearful of China's growing regional dominance, and worried that the BRI is ultimately a means to supplant the prevailing US-led regional security structure and restore the Middle Kingdom order, with China as the only power that matters in the region. According to this view, once China has complete control of the regional logistics hubs and sea ports, this will severely limit the autonomy of China's neighbors, including South Korea, who will have to toe the Chinese line, both economically and politically, or risk their own peace and prosperity.

• Maritime Security
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.71-123
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• 2021

Seoul is under increasing pressure to choose between the US-led IndoPacific Strategy (IPS) and China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Accordingly, this paper undertakes a detailed appraisal of the IPS and the BRI in the context of Korea's national policy imperatives. Based on a study of network structure by Daniel Nexon and Thomas Wright (2007), the present study seeks to identify a particular network structure within the IPS and the BRI. Through this analysis, the relationship between the core and the participant states will be addressed. Awareness of specific configurations of the IPS and the BRI is important as these reveal what participant states can expect from each network. According to Nexon and Wright, there are four types of network structure: unipolar anarchy, hegemonic order, constitutional order, and imperial order. Based on this, we argue that the IPS has a constitutional order and the BRI has an imperial order. Therefore, we suggest to Seoul that participating in the IPS may make more room for an independent foreign policy than would a BRI partnership with China. South Korea would benefit by participating in the IPS in terms of its national security, striking a favourable regional balance of power.

• Acta Via Serica
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.83-104
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• 2022

This article attempts to explain current social perceptions in Mexico about the Silk Road. Based on a critical geopolitics approach, the author analyzes how the idea of the Silk Road is socially constructed in Mexican popular geopolitics, focusing on studying digital mass media between 2013 and 2020. The main research questions are: how is the Silk Road notion constructed in Mexican popular geopolitics and what are the geopolitical implications for Mexico? The article discovers that in Mexico, the idea of the "Silk Road" is profoundly close to the idea of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) given China's geostrategic discourse that constructs the BRI as a "New Silk Road". The article also argues that Mexico's social-political agency to deal with China may be hindered by divergent social perceptions in favor and against the "Silk Road".

• East Asian Economic Review
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.305-336
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• 2022

This study applied the macro-micro simulation model (i.e., what-if analysis) to investigate the impact of transport related to the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) on poverty and income inequality in Laos. We selected Laos as a case study of a developing country. We used the standard GTAP model with the GTAP database (version 10) for the macrosimulation, whereas we used the household model with the latest Lao household data from 2019 for the microsimulation. Our findings revealed that the output of the Lao economy was anticipated to increase by up to 0.3%, while the poverty rate was anticipated to decline from 17.0% to 15.7%. However, there would be winners and losers in industries and groups of households in different areas. In particular, rich households with a comparative socioeconomic advantage, such as in education, engagement in nonfarm business, and infrastructure access, would mostly gain benefits; consequently, this would lead to higher inequality in Laos. Therefore, the inequality index (i.e., the Gini coefficient) would increase from 41.2 to 60.1. After a simulation of BRI transport, we also found that some nonpoor households, which are mainly associated with farm activities and lower educational levels, would fall into poverty.

• Asia Pacific Journal of Business Review
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.19-44
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• 2021

Sub Saharan Africa (SSA) is receiving increased investments in the energy sector under the belt and road initiative (BRI) project since its inception in 2013. SSA has a worse energy efficiency ratio coupled with deficient electricity access, through analysis showed varied impacts on the SSA countries due to the BRI initiative. This study dilves into the influencing factors for Energy Efficiency (EE) in 38 SSA countries, applying the probit and logit approach for 2000-2018. The Multiple-regression model shows significant results of some variables such as foreign direct investment, gross domestic product, and port infrastructure quality being significant on EE under BRI initiative countries. However, the logit and probit models produce similar results and the marginal effect for the entire variable, except energy imports that do not likely impact EE. Furthermore, the interaction of quality of port infrastructure and foreign direct investment variables produces significant results, highlighting the increased investments SSA receives under the BRI initiative in the energy and transport sectors. The model Percent correctly predicted (PCP) value was about 84%, indicating it correctly classified the variables and about 16% not classified. The study recommends EE performance standards should be incorporated on energy projects in SSA to ensure that these projects are energy efficient and decouple SSA's energy demand from economic growth. The research proffers suggestions for policy regarding the BRI initiative in SSA and the implications on sustainable energy and building a community with a shared future.