Reordering China, Respacing the World: Belt and Road Initiative (一带一路) as an Emergent Geopolitical Culture

Abstract

Since it was set out in speeches by China’s Premier Xi Jinping in September and October 2013, discussion of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has proliferated in China. We argue that the scale and density of this discussion can usefully be conceptualized as an emergent geopolitical culture, reworking geopolitical narratives and spatial policies established in China in the second half of the twentieth century. In charting this emergence, we examine the ways in which the BRI links the reordering of China’s economic geography with articulations of China and the world. Surveying BRI as an emergent geopolitical culture, we draw on the example of the narratives of familiarity, partnership, and location vis-à-vis China and Singapore. Our conclusions reflect on how the BRI is appropriated to visions of China’s destiny. Key Words: Belt and Road Initiative, China, geopolitical culture, Singapore.

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