Abstract
Since China proposed the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), this major development project spanning Asia, Europe, and Africa has attracted tremendous attention worldwide. Research on the communication of this initiative has also blossomed. Addressing the limitations of existing research with singular perspectives which fail to fully reflect the complexities and variations of the BRI, Carolijn van Noort provides new insights through her latest work China’s Communication of the Belt and Road Initiative: Silk Road and Infrastructure Narratives. Drawing on infrastructure and Silk Road narratives, this book aims to examine how China constructs consensus and promotes its global influence. Although featuring relatively simplified analytical frameworks which overlook differences across countries and changes in China's communication strategies, this framework has demonstrated application potential based on abundant case studies. Overall, the theoretical contributions and practical values of this book remain to be validated, but the research agendas put forward do bring refreshing perspectives to academia and warrant further investigation.
As the first volume of the Routledge Series on the BRI, China’s Communication of the Belt and Road Initiative: Silk Road and Infrastructure Narratives mainly explores two questions: How does China narrate infrastructure to create shared meanings for BRI infrastructure projects? And how does China employ past expressions to revive the Silk Road? Adopting a combined research method of visual analysis, bibliographic analysis, narrative analysis and literary criticism, this book evaluates China’s communication practices with cases including BRI publicity videos, BRICS infrastructure projects in transportation (Kyrgyzstan’s alternative north-south road, Kenya’s standard gauge railway (SGR), and China-Maldives Friendship Bridge), and literary works like The Travels of Marco Polo.
After elaborating essential background information in Chapter 1, the author completes the theoretical construction of infrastructure narratives and Silk Road narratives in two chapters. Drawing on concepts and theories from science and technology studies, Chapter 2 conceptualizes the formation of infrastructure narratives, arguing that infrastructure narratives consist of spatial, temporal, political, economic, technological and perceptive infrastructure modalities. China selects and emphasizes those infrastructure modalities that contribute to a positive evaluation of its infrastructure actions and behaviors. Chapter 3 explicates the formation of Silk Road narratives conceptually by introducing the Silk Road as a popular topic in foreign policy and describing China’s selective use of Silk Road history. It distinguishes four aspects related to the Silk Road: nostalgia, people mobility, landscapes, and exchanges (trade, technology, and culture). To revive the Silk Road, China has promoted all four aspects, albeit selectively.
The author then combines theory with empirical cases in three parts (five chapters) to demonstrate China’s international communication of the BRI using visual analysis, narrative analysis and literary criticism. Chapter 4 explores China’s communication of the “BRICS initiative” during the second Belt and Road Forum in 2019. The first half introduces China’s “go global” strategy, explains how the BRICS contribute to China’s domestic and international ambitions, and depicts China’s global media strategy and the goals of its communication. The second half explicates how these ambitions and strategies provided forms for China’s mediation at the 2019 Belt and Road Forum. Visual analysis of the video “Achievements of BRI” reveals how the communication of the Silk Road and infrastructure produced sugar-coated media advertisements.
Chapters 5-7 examine China’s communication on Kyrgyzstan’s alternative north-south road, Kenya’s SGR and China-Maldives Friendship Bridge, respectively. In these three cases, the author argues that China attempts to legitimize these projects and promote the BRICS initiative through tailored infrastructure and Silk Road narratives. Specifically, China emphasizes how these infrastructure projects improve local transport connections, shorten travel times across regions, and create convenience for business activities, following the six elements of infrastructure narratives summarized earlier. China publicizes that these projects embody partnership between the two countries, demonstrate China’s technological prowess, and have earned recognition and acclaim from local people. In addition, China selectively employs historical vocabularies like the Tang Dynasty’s Silk Road and Ming Admiral Zheng He’s voyages to strengthen bilateral friendships and shape its image as an amiable and cooperative great power neighbor and partner. However, considering varying extents of anti-China sentiments or doubts about Chinese-funded projects in these three countries, such endeavors to beautify infrastructure projects also expose vulnerabilities of China’s communication, prone to the influence of unexpected negative emotions or public opinion environments.
Chapter 8 examines China’s selective use of Silk Road history in external communication and resulting discursive gaps through literary analysis of The Travels of Marco Polo and The Travels of Ibn Battutah. It points out that China’s frequent reference to past travelers aims to promote personnel mobility and foreign relations. But such literary accounts also lead people to reflect on applicability of the Silk Road notion across time and space, revealing nostalgic sentiments within, questioning the significance of historical mobility, and presenting a more diverse impression of China. Hence, China’s selective historical expressions demonstrate aesthetic vulnerability.
In the concluding chapter, the author summarizes the key arguments, namely, that China attempts to construct shared meanings for BRI infrastructure projects and revive the Silk Road through tailored infrastructure and Silk Road narratives. This book’s greatest contribution lies in summarizing and analyzing existing fragmented research related to China’s BRI communication, combining it with historical evidence and realities on the ground, detailing the role of each factor in infrastructure and Silk Road narratives, thus forming a generalizable narrative analysis framework. However, in constructing infrastructure narratives, the author seems to have overlooked the differences in infrastructure development levels across countries and regions by directly applying a unified six-dimensional analytical framework for case analysis, which to some extent ignores the complexities of specific conditions in the countries examined. For instance, compared to African countries like Kenya, Kyrgyzstan features an overall more advanced infrastructure, thus China’s narrative strategies should also be distinguished accordingly. The four dimensions of the Silk Road narratives identified by the author also fail to reflect the shifting policy priorities of the BRI across different stages of development, seemingly assuming China’s narrative strategies have remained basically unchanged from 2013 until now. In fact, the focus and communication emphasis of the BRI are undergoing adjustments in response to external environment changes like the COVID-19 pandemic (Buckley, 2020). Although the author points out that China’s selective invocation of history can lead to aesthetic vulnerability, there lacks in-depth discussions on the motivations behind such practice and its effects across different countries. As some scholars argue, such deployment of traditional symbols is conducive for China to reconstruct its disrupted identity amid globalization processes (Callahan, 2006). How China can strike a balance between tradition and modernity, globalization and localization in its communication strategies remains an open question for further investigation.
Overall, this book requires further enhancement in terms of theoretical contribution and innovation. The complexity and variability of the communication of China's BRI have not been fully explored. It is hoped that subsequent research can build upon the framework provided by this book and delve deeper, aligning it more closely with practical applications. Additionally, this book proposes four future research agendas—China’s communication on economic zones and logistics hubs, Silk Road communication with countries lacking historical precedent, connections between infrastructure communication and behavioral change, and China’s post-COVID communication of the BRICS initiative—pointing directions for scholars in global politics, international relations, communication, and Asian Studies.
