Translocal Implications of the Green Belt and Road Initiative: The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor Case

Abstract

Since its inception in 2013, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has been surrounded by doubts and fears. Some were confirmed, and some were dismissed, because they were groundless or due to adjustments. One of the most critical adjustments was the environmental dimension in the BRI projects, reflecting China's internal environmental concerns. The enactment of the constitutional rule pursuing ecological civilization can translate to increasing environmental security within the investments in the recipient countries. The hypothesis in the study is that adopting the green BRI incorporates the ecological civilization concept, which refers to a myriad of transnational efforts by China to increase environmental security within its partners. In addition, it includes a constructivist perspective that considers ideational factors that do not happen at the level of the current neoliberal international institutions. Finally, this paper deploys the content analysis technique to seek sufficient empirical evidence to confirm the hypothesis and point out new research directions and limitations.

Brazil-China Cooperation in the Arctic Region: A Prospective Analysis of a Practical Agenda for Mutual, Local and Community Interests

“…Cooperation towards the rebalance of powers in international relations comprises some initiatives, such as indirect transformation of existing international institutions (Abdenur 2016;Dann and Riegner 2019;Stuenkel 2016b), creation of competing multilateral institutions (Dann and Riegner 2019;Stuenkel 2017), re-definition of the terms and governance of existing international regimes. Some examples are the re-imagination of institutional standards concerning (i) protection of the environment (Castro and Wang 2023;Castro and Zhang 2022;Vazquez 2020) -including the recent joint statement on combating climate change (Ministério de Relações Exteriores do Brasil 2023), and (ii) trade and investment (Bath 2017) -including the recent agreements "for direct operation between the Brazilian real and the Chinese yuan -with no in-between dollarization" ("Brazil's President Lula makes third state visit to China." 2023).…”