Interpreting Belt and Road Initiative Dynamics in China and Kazakhstan

Abstract

China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a Eurasian integration project, has garnered significant international attention and sparked extensive academic and political discourse since its formulation. The most wide-spread interpretations of the initiative interpret it as China’s grand strategy to achieve its geopolitical and geo-economic ambitions, suggesting that China utilises economic leverage to establish indebtedness and exert influence over countries. Meanwhile, Chinese authorities and some analysts describe the initiative to be benevolent and beneficial for the development of countries and global governance. This research aims to address the accuracy of the divergent views surrounding BRI by conducting a thorough and comprehensive examination. To do so, it examines how the BRI as a policy paradigm was launched in China, how it came to become a foreign policy framework, and most importantly how it evolved over time domestically and externally. Kazakhstan serves as a case study as it was chosen as the country to launch the initiative. Additionally, it is in the immediate neighbourhood of China with ample natural resources and has relevance for the rest of Central Asia and more broadly speaking for Eurasia. This research focuses on the internal political dynamics and implementation practices of the BRI in China and Kazakhstan that fills in details for understanding the BRI. Specifically, the BRI was presented as a policy framework following the intentional design of the tradition and routine of policymaking in China. This initial framework was expanded by a series of documents issued by different agencies and subnational governments. These were further produced via administrative instructions and compulsory requirements for corresponding reports, holding training sessions for subnational actors, along with campaign style practices which were used to call for local compliance. Meanwhile the local governments of China possessed considerable leeway to influence the drafting of the BRI guidelines and report subsequent BRI projects to Chinese central government. The bureaucratic arrangements and Chinese official discourses indicate a higher position of economic motivations rather than politics and security interests in China’s original design of the BRI. Overtime, the initiative also adjusted itself in response to ground-level critiques while also promoting instruments for cooperation that proved feasible in practice. This research has shown that Kazakhstan’s agency in the way that the BRI projects were introduced, launched and undertaken is significant and in line with its own priorities. The evidence from Kazakhstan, one of the earliest countries that was categorised as a participant country, indicates that it was able to align its national interests with China under the framework of the BRI. The joint projects developed between the two countries were either explicitly listed in Kazakhstan’s state programmes or located in its priority development sectors. The 19 cases of BRI projects chosen in Kazakhstan also showcase multiple partners and stakeholders as is prioritised by Kazakhstan’s multi vector foreign policy. In addition, the bilateral industrial investment cooperation mechanism started between the government of China and Kazakhstan fed into legislation and policy campaigns in China and influenced China’s broader cooperation with other BRI countries. Lastly, these projects also show that there are mixed impacts on Kazakhstan’s industrial upgrade and environmental development, as well as on the expansion of Chinese enterprises and products overseas. The complexities of the planning and implementation process of the initiative in China and the role of participant countries in shaping the initiative’s content have often been both overlooked and subsumed in favour of 3 4 popular tropes. Accordingly, this research has unpacked materials and process of the designing and planning process in China and included an analysis of indigenous voices from the participant countries to bring out a more robust and nuanced comprehension of the BRI itself and China’s increasingly proactive international engagements. In conclusion, this research shows that the nature of the BRI is flexible and adaptable in line with other policy frameworks in China. The BRI is a polycentric process that allows selective implementation and interpretation by domestic actors and participant countries.