The Belt and Road Initiative and international business policy: A kaleidoscopic perspective

Abstract

In this editorial, we take stock of the nature and scope of China’s global development strategy named the “Belt and Road Initiative” (BRI), and how it influences international business (IB) policy. We build on the state of the current IB literature on the BRI and the findings of the Special Issue articles to suggest the need for complex integrative thinking on the initiative. We show that the BRI – like a kaleidoscope – elicits vastly different patterns of opportunities and challenges as we turn the perspective from policymakers in China, to governments in BRI host countries, and to officials in third countries. We illustrate how the application of integrative thinking to these perspectives allows for the identification when BRI projects generate tensions between countries and how this influences their IB policies. We further discuss under which circumstances BRI projects may benefit all sides and which IB policies can help promote these types of projects. We conclude with a discussion of future research directions.

The rise of techno-geopolitical uncertainty: Implications of the United States CHIPS and Science Act

“…The US is also concerned that the Chinese state’s close channels of communication with its private sector provides it with a critical lever that it can exploit to advance its geopolitical interests (Gertz & Evers, 2020 ). And the US is worried about the overly heavy influence of the state in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), where the government plays a key role in selecting BRI projects, financing them with preferential loans from Chinese state-owned banks, and using state-owned enterprises for their construction (Li et al, 2022 ). A burgeoning IB literature studies how this state capitalism shapes China’s outward foreign direct investment and global competition (e.g., Buckley, Clegg, Cross, Liu, Voss, & Zheng, 2007 ; Sutherland, Anderson, Bailey, & Alon, 2020 ).…”

“…Extant IB scholarship has often observed such uncertainty with a polarized view, either over-emphasizing conflicts and security concerns (realism) or ignoring geopolitics (liberalism) (Farrell & Newman, 2020 ). This leads to a lack of understanding of a fuller picture of transitioning globalization, a reality that holds even between the US and China (e.g., Allison, 2017 ; Li, et al, 2022 ). This transition occurs for cross-border exchanges between states, between blocs of countries, between ecosystems, and between firms, with a range of new causes, rationales, and forms to be tackled by IB researchers.…”

“…When extending political risk to geopolitical risk, it helps scholars and practitioners alike to distil interplays between political, economic, diplomatic, ideological, and cultural issues within the same framework and to comprehend such interplays not just from a single country (home or host) but from a holistic or global lens. In addition, the IB community may benefit from integrating international political science with IB theories (e.g., Li et al, 2022 ; Meyer & Li, 2022 ; Witt, 2019 ). The deepened complexity stemming from the weaponization of global value chains mandates a conjoining of international politics with international business in ways that comprise a fundamentally new and more inclusive paradigmatic approach.…”

The establishment mode of Chinese MNEs abroad and the Belt and Road Initiative: insights from a strategy tripod perspective

“…The BRI can be considered as a formal institutional change that covers social, economic and political spheres together to regulate interactions between agents involved in cross-border transactions (Li et al ., 2019). As a result, the BRI has not only helped Chinese MNEs to internationalize quickly, but it also presents a potent institutional power that contributes to alleviate suspicions and concerns in host countries like legitimacy unacceptance (Li et al ., 2022b; Wang and Liu, 2022).…”

The impact of Chinese foreign direct investment on host country economic growth

“…As the world’s second largest FDI investor (UNCTAD, 2019), a significant body of research investigating the determinants of CFDI has been undertaken (Buckley et al, 2007; Kolstad and Wiig, 2012; Ross, 2015; Ross et al, 2019). However, there is now a requirement to better understand the impacts that CFDI is having on host country economies as opposed to simply explaining cross-country flows of CFDI (Buckley et al, 2018; Fu and Bolaky, 2020; Li et al, 2022). Moreover, while a range of extant literature has found linkages between FDI and economic growth (Li and Liu, 2005; Makki and Somwaru, 2004; Nair-Reichert and Weinhold, 2001), there is little if any empirical research demonstrating the actual impact of CFDI on host countries’ economic growth.…”