China’s BRI developmental agency in its own words: A content analysis of key policy documents

Since its announcement in 2013, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has inspired an ever-growing stream of literature cutting across several disciplines, with highest concentration of studies in the social sciences. Unsurprisingly a great deal of these studies are concerned with the rationale behind this massive undertaking and its potential impact in the current world order. Here a clear rift is apparent between those who think of it as a tool serving China’s geopolitical interests and rise at the world stage, and those who see it as a more nebulous and fragmented undertaking driven by domestic economic and political pressures. A similar concern is reflected in a smaller body of literature that looks at the BRI from a development angle, the dominant inquiry line revolving around its likely impact in global development governance and the underlying neoliberal cooperation norms and practices. Here too there is a clear divide between those who see China’s increasing development agency as a positive complement and those who perceive it in a direct collision course with the neoliberal aid paradigm. This dichotomy of interpretations project two contrasting images of China’s development agency that are often difficult to reconcile.