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

Abstract

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. This study contributes to this body of literature by providing a profile of China's development agency according to its own words. Since 2015 a raft of BRI policy documents have been published by Beijing to fill the initial void and regain control over the narrative. Through a content analysis of key policy papers and speeches, we attempt to uncover what are the initiative's aims, governance mechanisms, normative under pinnings, and targeted areas as per the official discourse. In doing so we hope to bring more clarity as to the nature of China developmental agency. Based on our findings we argue that much like its domestic development model, China's development cooperation approach is pragmatically hybrid with the rhetoric showing clear signs of convergence but also divergence with the dominant paradigm. The evolving discourse suggests a highly fluid approach and thus a work in constant progress, which progression hinges upon reactive and cumulative adjustments to feedback as the initiative is rolled out.