Belt and road initiative as a new element of China's global strategy: A political economy analysis

The Belt and Road Initiative has become a very significant research topic in global politics because of its described aim as the revival of Historical Silk Road and as reuniting the Eurasian Geographic Belt. The dilemma between its opportunities to its participative countries and its potential for China to use as a foreign policy tool generates the need for an analytical framework on how to understand Belt and Road Initiative. The impacts of the dynamism in globalization forms and of the aspiration-level of participating countries to BRI make it a requirement for researches to take non-China factors into attention in understanding attempts. In respect of this requirement, this research argues that BRI is in a dilemma between becoming an international cooperation platform and being a foreign policy tool of China. This dissertation develops this analytical framework and analyzes the essential elements of BRI including non-China ones through the analytical framework. With the aim to make a political-economic analysis, this research adds dynamic forms of globalization and aspiration-level of participating countries for financial and trade integration as independent variables in addition to China's grand strategy which is the traditional factor in BRI studies. The impacts of each variable on the problematic areas of BRI is examined in seperate chapters, and this research argues in conclusion that BRI has important obligations even for financial and trade integration.