Global Perception of the Belt and Road Initiative: A Natural Language Processing Approach

Abstract

In less than seven years since the launch of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), 138 countries have signed on to the program, with by some counts 118 projects being planned. BRI is a Chinese multi-trillion-dollar global infrastructure initiative that has geopolitical implications for both the participating as well as non-participating countries. Some of the very appealing unique selling points of this initiative also make it controversial amongst its stakeholders. This variation in sentiments can be perceived in the media reporting where there is freedom of expression. In this paper, we have used sentiment analysis to gauge the variation in the stakeholder perception over time across three groups - China, participating and non-participating countries. Our analysis of 7,856 news articles has provided quantitative evidence of declining positive sentiment over time.

Global Trends in Countries' Perceptions of the Belt and Road Initiative

“…Hlatshwayo et al (2018) used the database Factiva to calculate the news coverage of corruption activities across countries. Factiva has also been used to study the evolving sentiment towards the BRI inside and outside of China (Mokashi et al, 2022). However, the authors are not able to obtain a representative large-N sample.…”

Belt and road initiative membership and voting patterns in the United Nations General Assembly

“…In order to secure these benefits, BRI member states might have strategic incentives to adhere to the interests of the Chinese investors. In contrast, other scholars claim that BRI membership has no substantial political impact or even triggers a backlash against China (Balding, 2018;Mokashi et al, 2022). Opposition may be fueled by international headlines suggesting that China lends above market prices and that BRI investments are linked to corruption, poor working conditions, and unpayable debts.…”