China's Rise, the Belt and Road Initiative and the Future of the Global Order

The implications of China’s rise for the future of the liberal international order have been the object of intense debate since the mid-1990s. As a platform for international cooperation promoted by China, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has more recently revived this debate. While some see the BRI as a radical challenge to the liberal international order, others consider the initiative as Beijing’s attempt at adjusting—rather than contesting—the existing order to its own preferences. In this respect, a critical component of the BRI’s impact lies in its space-shaping ambition: with several factors now contributing to a potential spatial fragmentation of international order, the BRI might play a major role in advancing or contrasting this trend. If the BRI remains focussed on Eurasia as China’s enlarged periphery, then it might work as a powerful driver of fragmentation, ultimately contributing to the demise of the liberal international order as a global order. On the contrary, if the BRI is articulated as a project with truly global ambitions, it might work as a driver of spatial integration, thus indirectly reinforcing “globality” as a central tenet of the future international order.