IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bpj/statpp/v14y2023i1p19-44n6.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Chinese Debt Trap Diplomacy Narrative: An Empirical Analysis

Author

Listed:
  • Liu Kerry

    (Independent, Scholar, Australia)

Abstract

China’s debt trap diplomacy has been debated among academia, think tanks, and the policymaking community. Unlike previous research, which mainly focuses on China’s lending practice and strategic intentions, this study looks at the measurement of this narrative and its relations with the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the China threat narratives. In particular, based on Google Trends search results from 1 February 2018 to 7 November 2021, this study creatively created weekly time series data to measure the narratives. Based on an autoregressive distributed lag model, this study finds that the BRI narrative and the China threat narrative make significant contributions to the debt trap diplomacy narrative. Results based on sub-datasets show that these significant relations are mainly driven by the English-speaking Indian public and that these relations are insignificant in the United States. This study contributes to the literature on China’s debt trap diplomacy by bringing solid empirical evidence and to academia as well in methods by presenting a (still) new quantitative approach to international relations.

Suggested Citation

  • Liu Kerry, 2023. "The Chinese Debt Trap Diplomacy Narrative: An Empirical Analysis," Statistics, Politics and Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 14(1), pages 19-44, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:bpj:statpp:v:14:y:2023:i:1:p:19-44:n:6
    DOI: 10.1515/spp-2022-0017
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1515/spp-2022-0017
    Download Restriction: For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1515/spp-2022-0017?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bpj:statpp:v:14:y:2023:i:1:p:19-44:n:6. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Peter Golla (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.degruyter.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.