Background

In 2013, the Chinese government launched the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a multitrillion-dollar plan to enhance connectivity across Eurasia and beyond. The plan quickly attracted both fanfare and criticism, especially regarding the potential impacts of infrastructure development on the environment. To bolster both the BRI’s image and environmental credentials, the Chinese government introduced the “Green Silk Road,” now more commonly known as the “Green Belt and Road” (Green BRI), with a series of regulations, mechanisms, and platforms. The plan aims to integrate low-carbon infrastructure and sustainable development into the BRI. Green BRI also serves as a key vehicle for promoting and disseminating related but distinct Chinese environmental norms such as “ecological civilization”, also known as “ecocivilization,” China’s environmental governance political ideology envisions a sustainable society in which ecology and natural resources are protected without compromising economic growth.

Exactly what “green” means, however, is subject to debate. My research examines the academic disucssions, state regulations, non-state mobilizations, and local implementation surrounding the sustainability of the BRI.

Academic discussions

Liu, X., & Bennett, M. M. (2022). The geopolitics of knowledge communities: Situating Chinese and foreign studies of the Green Belt and Road Initiative. Geoforum, 128, 168-180. link

Our review reveals that divergences between the implicit geopolitics of Chinese and foreign knowledge communities affect their empirical results and interpretations. Studies by Chinese and foreign, English-language knowledge communities reflect different perspectives and biases regarding not only the BRI, but China’s role and responsibilities in the areas of environmental sustainability, global governance, international development, and many others. Scientists also publish their work for distinct audiences, which affects how they frame and present their results.

Both Chinese and foreign scholars carry out research across the four themes below in the literature. Yet the two groups pay differing degrees of attention to them, ask questions from different angles, use different indicators and measures, and collect data from different sources. 1) environmental impact assessment of BRI infrastructure projects; 2) governance by non-state actors; 3) commercial opportunities; 4) convergence between the BRI and the SDGs.

Tree maps of the main themes and regional disparities of Chinese and foreign corpuses on the Green BRI.

Consensus of the two corpuses appears in the following areas.

  • They perceive a need for more sustainable infrastructure projects under the BRI and acknowledge the benefits of bridging the BRI with the UN SDGs.
  • They underscore the importance of BRI stakeholders beyond the Chinese state and host governments to ensure its sustainability, though they point to different non-state actors.
  • They agree on the importance of host country contexts and capacity in determining the environmental impacts of BRI projects.

Three key areas of disagreement across the two groups are clear.

  • Criticisms of the BRI’s environmental impacts mostly appear in the foreign corpus. While Chinese studies explain how projects can help reduce host countries’ ecological and carbon footprints, foreign scholars scrutinize the BRI’s impacts on site-specific and immediate indicators, such as forest cover change.
  • The two corpuses exhibit contrasting opinions regarding the non-state actors involved in the Green BRI. When explaining BRI projects’ failures or poor environmental performance, Chinese scholars often point to Chinese companies’ inexperience in dealing with relations with host countries’ actors, such as NGOs. In contrast, foreign scholars blame their intrinsic reluctance to enact and follow strict environmental standards. Foreign scholars also perceive NGOs as crucial stakeholders due to their ability to help curb the excesses of development, while Chinese scholars see them as threats to the BRI’s success.
  • The two knowledge communities are split regarding whether China should export its domestic norms or import international ones. Most Chinese scholars support the government’s wider aim of participating in global governance by sharing Chinese “wisdom,” norms, and practices, as well as exploring commercial opportunities within the BRI for China’s rapidly expanding green technology industry to “go out.” But foreign scholars instead stress that China should introduce more international norms and standards into the BRI regulations and practices.

We attribute these cleavages to divergent implicit geopolitics embedded within the Chinese and foreign knowledge communities, which reflects broader interstate power competition. This research underscores how knowledge production is geopolitically situated even within environmental studies, which are often viewed as objective.

State rationalities

incoming…

Others

incoming…