China´S International Projection Since 2008: The new Core-Periphery relations and The belt and Road Initiative Through Foreign Direct Investment

Abstract

This paper´s central hypothesis is that China´s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) implies the construction of new networks in the international division of labor that insert the partner countries in a peripheral condition towards China. Although it is clear that the ambitious project of Eurasia´s integration, announced by Xi Jinping in 2013 and formalized in 2017, is by itself a novelty of structural impacts in the international system, it is also a product of deep transformations within China since the early 2000s and, to understand its current impacts, it is crucial to look back at the roots of China's foreign insertion in the previous decade. This paper is divided into the following sections: i) a brief discussion of the three major domestic transformations in China since the 2000s; ii) China's economic statecraft overseas as a byproduct of strategic and economic forces; iii) the symbolic-institutional dimension of that economic statecraft; iv) a case study of Chinese projection in Southeast (SE) Asia divided in two parts, which correspond to the two waves of outward foreign direct investments (OFDI); and v) final considerations.