Geo-Economic Linkages between China and the Countries along the 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road and Their Types

Abstract

With the advances of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the geo-economic interactions between China and countries along the 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road counties (MSRCs) continue to increase, and analyzing the geo-economic relations between China and the MSRCs is extremely important for a scientific understanding of bilateral geo-economic cooperation. Differently from the traditional logic of geo-economic competition and cooperation, we constructed a new framework based on the dominant factors of geo-economic relations and used an extreme random forest regression model to classify the geo-economic relation types between China and MSRCs from 2006 to 2017. The results show that the unbalanced development of investment and trade between China and MSRCs hindered the enhancement of the intensity of bilateral geo-economic linkage from 2006 to 2017. The “Matthew effect” of China’s geo-economic flow linkage with MSRCs is significant. There are obvious differences in the dominant factors affecting the types of geo-economic relations between China and MSRCs, and the distribution of the importance of the indices of the types of geo-economic relations in each country is disordered. Geopolitics, markets, and resources have played important roles in the geo-economic linkages between China and MSRCs. There are five types of geo-economic relations between China and the MSRCs: market-oriented type, resource-oriented type, market-resource-oriented type, market-geopolitics-oriented type, and resource-geopolitics-oriented type, of which the market-oriented type is the most important type of geo-economic relations. In the future, China should focus on regional powers along the Maritime Silk Road for bilateral geo-economic cooperation, actively promote the balanced development of bilateral geo-economic elements flows, strengthen geopolitical cooperation with MSRCs, and formulate cooperation plans according to the types of geo-economic relations.

Geo-Economic Analysis Based on an Improved Ant Colony Optimization

“…(1) The preferred and random paths are grouped, the length of and trade flow along each path are calculated, and the data are assessed to see if they are normally distributed. (2) The two sets of sample data are mixed, and the ranks are arranged in ascending order based on dataset size. (3) The rank sum of the two samples R 1 and R 2 is calculated.…”

“…Geo-economic relations are formed when economically relevant flows of geo-economic factors move between economies. The interaction of geo-economic factors is constantly reshaping new geo-economies [2]. The process of geo-economic factor interaction is often influenced by the spatial location, resource endowment, economic strength, security and development needs of an economy.…”

Geopolitical Risk Evolution and Obstacle Factors of Countries along the Belt and Road and Its Types Classification

“…It is worth noting that nontraditional security factors such as economic development, social stability, climate change and information technology can also influence geopolitical risk by affecting national stability. However, national sovereign security and military security are always at the core of geopolitical risk [ 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 ]. In terms of the impact effect of geopolitical risk, the geopolitical risk will cause fluctuations in international finance, global energy and global food supply on the macro level [ 21 , 22 ], and will cause enterprises, investors and consumers to adjust their own business behavior, investment strategies and consumption structure on the micro level [ 23 , 24 , 25 ].…”

Understanding Western geoeconomy and geoeconomics

“…辑， 只是冲突方式发生了改变 [6] 。此外， 由于中国、 印度、 巴西等新兴大国和发展中国家近年来的崛起 以及 "一带一路" 倡议的提出和实施， 促进了地缘经 济学研究较多地关注大国之间的关系， 中国、 亚洲 也成为了高频关键词。 自 1990 年 Luttwak [6] 使用 "地缘经济" 一词来描 述冷战后的国际体系以来， 学者们以不同的方式来 使用 "地缘经济" 这个术语 [7][8][9][10][11] ， 但对于什么是地缘经 济并没有一个明确定义 [12] ， 经济和国家安全的关系 仍然模糊不清 [13] 。关于地缘经济学的定义以及地 缘经济与地缘政治关系的争论仍持续存在， 导致了 地缘经济学在近 30 年的研究中概念混乱。进入 21 世纪以后， 特别是后金融危机时期， "黑天鹅" "灰犀 牛" 事件频发， 中美贸易战、 科技战不断升级， 多极 经济力量体系崛起， 国际权力结构正发生深刻重 组， 陆大道等 [14] 呼吁地理学者应紧跟时代的步伐， 为中国和平发展提供地缘经济理论支撑。但国内 在引进地缘经济学时存在一定的理解偏差和认识 混乱， 将地缘经济学认为是指地理和经济的简单结 合， 与西方地缘经济学主流研究脱轨 [15][16][17] 1990 年 因 Luttwak [6] 的 使 用 才 正 式 进 入 人 们 的 视 野， 但地缘经济实践及其相关解释体系却是由来 已久 [18] 际经济的相互关系 [18] 。而地缘政治学作为一门以 独特的空间视角来研究国家行为和国际政治经济 关系的交叉学科 [14] ， 其理论发展更是直接为地缘经 济学的理论发展奠定了基础。 地缘政治一般来自资本主义生产方式的内部 政治经济动力， 特别是来自资本循环， 资本主义生 产方式在空间上是有组织的， 并会带来地缘政治后 果 [19] 。早在 19 世纪末 20 世纪初， 人们就注意到经 济因素对地缘战略目标的重要性。通过考察古典 地缘政治学可以发现， 经济实力的概念这时就已经 出现在马汉 [20] 和麦金德 [21] 的著作中。他们分别讨论 了通过铁路运输货物对于竞争欧亚大陆控制权的 优势和通过主导海上贸易能够获得的权力投射能 力。而 Fairgrieve [22] 和 Hirschman [23] 则分别在他们的 著作中介绍了英国如何从资源和经济生产的全球 分布中推导出其地缘战略需要， 以及德国是如何利 用国际贸易体系来为国家地缘战略所服务的。二 战后， 地缘政治研究因与纳粹德国对外政策联系紧 密而受到谴责与抑制， 尽管如此， 但这一时期战后 秩序的重建也被后来的学者认为有地缘经济学的 身影。例如， 将北大西洋公约组织的建立和马歇尔 计划分别看作美国限制苏联在欧洲影响力的地缘 政治战略和地缘经济战略 [12] 讨了国际金融、 贸易制度与权力的相关性 [24][25] [6] 、 Hun-…”