Asian Journal of Political Science

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Beyond the status quo and revisionism: an

analysis of the role of China and the approaches of
China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) to the global
order

Lina Liu

To cite this article: Lina Liu (2020): Beyond the status quo and revisionism: an analysis of the role
of China and the approaches of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) to the global order, Asian
Journal of Political Science, DOI: 10.1080/02185377.2020.1837193

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/02185377.2020.1837193

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ASIAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE
https://doi.org/10.1080/02185377.2020.1837193

Beyond the status quo and revisionism: an analysis of the role

of China and the approaches of China’s Belt and Road
Initiative (BRI) to the global order
Lina Liu
Department of International Relations, Tsinghua University, Beijing, People’s Republic of China; Centre for
Comparative and International Studies, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH), Zurich,
Switzerland

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
What are the roles China plays and what approaches does China global order; status quo;
take to the global order? This paper goes beyond the singular revisionist; approach; the
and static view on the roles of states as either status quo or Belt and Road Initiative (BRI);
China
revisionist and introduces more subtle roles of states with multi-
approaches of Status Quo, Parallel Supplement, Nested
Enhancement, Regime Shifting, Competitive Regime Creation and
Ideological Confrontation. After coding 1889 events from the ‘Belt
and Road Portal’ and then taking eight most frequent case
clusters of the BRI as representative cases, the congruence
analysis leads to the main argument that China plays multiple
roles of rule taker, rule reformer, rule breaker and rule innovator.
The contribution is both theoretical and practical. It improves the
typology of states’ approaches to the global order and helps to
interpret the roles of emerging powers for the global order. By
designing the BRI Index and coding the case cluster, this paper
provides a new way to identify the representative case of the BRI.

Introduction
The world is at a crossroad where the global order is likely to be strongly contested, insti-
tutionally diverse and polycentric (Stephen, 2017). China is shifting from its low profile
strategy to a more revisionary period. Many voices in the authoritative and quasi-author-
itative sources in China claim that China is pro-active in constructing a new type of
global order pursuing mutual benefits, equal rights, openness and inclusiveness (Xi,
2014, pp. 311–319). In 2013, Chinese President Xi Jinping (2014) proposed the Belt
and Road Initiative (BRI), one of the most important diplomatic strategies of his presi-
dency. As the most significant and far-reaching initiative that China has ever taken (Page,
2013), the BRI is seen as leading to a new inclusive phase of globalization which will
determine the fate of Eurasia (Kim & Indeo, 2013).

CONTACT Lina Liu liulinajlu@163.com, lina.liu@eup.gess.ethz.ch

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed https://doi.org/10.1080/02185377.2020.1837193
© 2020 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
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2 L. LIU

There has been intense discussion about the content and impact of the BRI since it was
proposed by President Xi in 2013 (Brakman et al., 2019; Chung, 2018; D. Du & MA, 2015;
Johnson, 2016; Wang, 2016; Winter, 2016; Zhao, 2016). Scholars usually conceptualize
the BRI by content analysis of official documents (Jones, 2020), selection of some repre-
sentative cases like the AIIB and infrastructure projects (Chiu, 2017), or comparison with
its related traditional concepts of regional economic integration, partnership arrange-
ment, and community of common destiny (Zeng, 2016). However, these studies are
unable to capture the content of the BRI in rhetoric and in practice, and to provide jus-
tifications for selecting the representative case clusters. The discussion about the motiv-
ation of the BRI and its impact generally divides into two viewpoints where one side
emphasizes the defensive nature of the BRI and its integration into the global order in
many aspects, while the other side argues that the BRI is offensive towards the
Western hegemony and shows more revisionism behaviours. Du and MA (2015) argue
that the BRI is aimed at shaping a new structure for global economic governance,
which corresponds with the idea of Callahan (2016) that the BRI is intended to re-con-
stitute the regional order and, eventually, the global order with new norms. Zhou and
Esteban (2018) address this question and argue that the BRI is reshaping global govern-
ance and delegitimizing the US-dominated financial system with the AIIB. Jones (2020)
analyses official documents to demonstrate that the BRI is consistent with the prevailing
global order in tone, but that it unintentionally challenges existing norms, particularly
those relating to investment aid and environmental protection. Although these studies
mention the role of the BRI, they usually lack sufficient theoretical support and adequate
tests of their practical grounding. In addition, the binary outlook of status quo and revi-
sionism could not describe subtle behaviours and complex motivations of the BRI. The
explanations of current studies are inadequate because they do not consider the full scope
of the BRI and the subtle distinctions of its approaches to the global order.
What kind of role does China play in response to the global order? What approaches
does China’s BRI take to the global order? The main argument of this paper is that China
plays multiple roles in the world stage as rule taker, rule reformer, rule breaker and rule
innovator. This paper is structured as follows. It begins by reviewing the literature about
the role of states in the global order and existing gaps in analysis. The paper then pro-
poses these approaches to the global order: Status Quo, Parallel Supplement, Nested
Enhancement, Regime Shifting, Competitive Regime Creation, and Ideological Confron-
tation. After coding the most frequent case clusters of the BRI as representative cases with
the BRI index designed in this paper, the paper applies congruence analysis to verify the
approaches for each representative case cluster of the BRI. It concludes with a discussion
of the roles of China and approaches to the global order.

Beyond the dichotomy of the status quo and revisionist

There is a consensus on China’s increasingly more important position but no agreement
on the roles and approaches of China to the global order. Realists and the power trans-
formation theory supporters (Mearsheimer, 2001, p. 24) see the rising powers as the revi-
sionists because they are willing to challenge the current international arrangements and
to set up an order which conforms to their own needs. However, such claims take very
singular and static views and thus are overly simplified prescriptions for explain a
 ASIAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE 3

complex and dynamic environment (Shambaugh, 2005). Liberals and institutionalism

argue that rising powers tend to be cooperative and are socialized into the international
community. Johnston (2003)’s paper ‘Is China a status quo power?’ is one of the most
cited that discuss China’s role; it proves that China is a status quo rather than a revisionist
power according to five behaviour indicators. Similarly, Goldstein (2007) finds China’s
behaviour in East Asia mainly lends credence to expectations of cooperation, except in
implications for the Taiwan Strait. Compared with the realist theory, these studies
conduct some intensive research with some visible indicators. Nevertheless, liberals
tend to overemphasize the institutional constraints of global order on state behaviour
and underestimate the role of states in shaping the institutional structure. The criticism
from Shambaugh (2005) is that liberal institutionalism is unable to fully capture the com-
plicated phenomena of emerging powers; Shambaugh thus calls for more deep grounding
studies. Both realism and liberalism overlook the multiple and subtle roles of states in the
global order (Larson & Shevchenko, 2010).
Meanwhile, scholars generally classify the roles of states as status quo powers and revi-
sionists since they assume that the purpose of states is to obtain material interests based
on the distribution of power (Kastner & Saunders, 2012). Deriving from social identity
theory, Larson and Shevchenko (2010) argue that states are like individuals in a social
group: besides material interests, identity and recognition are also crucial elements in
deciding their behaviour. They find China and Russia now taking socially creativity strat-
egies such as advocating new norms, regimes or development models, pursuing face and
dignity, and emphasizing their unique characteristics and values to maintain distinctive
identities. Nel (2010) also characterizes the goals of emerging powers as redistribution
and recognition. In Nel’s perspective, emerging regional powers like Brazil, India and
South Africa are struggling against unfair power distribution, uneven development
opportunities and discrimination, disrespect and humiliation by the international com-
munity. These studies allow a more intensive interpretation of the behaviour of emerging
powers. The current paper also goes down the path of seeing states as subtle actors in
global society with the motivations of redistribution and recognition. Therefore, states
could take several different approaches to pursue their mixed material and ideational
goals. One contribution of this paper is to go beyond the dichotomy of status quo and
revisionism and provide a sufficient framework for explaining the behaviour of states
to the global order.
Approaches to the global order vary not only qualitatively but also quantitatively. As
well as oversimplifying the intentions of states, previous studies generally ignored the
possibility that states can change the global order on different levels. Johnston (2003) devel-
ops five indicators to assess whether a state is inside or outside the status quo but does not
define the global order systematically nor distinguishes the revision levels of the five indi-
cators. Rejecting the power distribution should be identified as more radical behaviour
than rejecting a specific rule or agenda in an institution. Another gap this paper intends
to fill is to distinguish the issues that the current global order covers and the vacuum
issue waiting for new arrangements, which could also imply different revision levels of
the approaches of states. This paper abandons the traditional typology of states’ roles.
Instead, it attempts to elaborate six approaches based on states’ behaviour towards the
different components and issues of the global order, contributing to the gap in research
on the ways and levels in which China deals with the current global order. The following
4 L. LIU

section illustrate the three variables in order to distinguish the approaches: the components
of global order, the issue of the global order, and behaviour towards the global order.

The components of global order and the issue

Regarding the operationalization of the global order, Cooley et al. (2019) propose two
dimensions of the balance of power and the elements of global order, generating four
approaches of status quo, reformist, positionalist and revolutionist. This paper goes
beyond the two dimensions of global order and follows the work of Mazarr et al. (2016,
p. 7) to develop the concept of the global order into the components in three levels: the
principle, engine and element. A common view is that the post-war core principle is
Western liberal internationalism combined with the values of economic openness, recipro-
city and multilateral management (Ikenberry, 1996). The engines derived from the liberal
principle are twofold. One part is the power distribution that implies American power and
the leadership of Western countries, while the other is Western value norms such as
freedom, democratization and the protection of human rights. Based on the principle
and engines, the global order includes some substantive and operative elements: extensive
institutions, treaties and rules in the field of politics, the economy, security and society.
Since the content of global order, especially the element, is inexhaustible, this paper only
includes that part of global order comparable with the BRI (see Table 1). The three com-
ponents of global order play a different role in its whole structure. The core principle is
essential to the whole structure of the global order, while adjusting specific elements of
the global order would not challenge the foundation of the whole.
As well as the components of the global order, this paper also seeks to determine
whether the global order is dealing with the existing issue or some vacuums. The prevail-
ing idea is that the existing global order has covered all the issues the world is facing, but
Chen (2014) criticizes the assumption that the global order has developed into a complete
and stationary stage. Chen’s opinion, which this paper also shares, is that the current
global order has many vacuum issues but lacks adequate attention to them or an
efficient solution. For example, cybersecurity has become a newly urgent issue with
the rapid development of computer technology. Again, upgrading transportation
would be a driving forces for inland countries but it is far from realization because of

Table 1. The Structure of the Current Global Order.

Elements
Politics: international and regional organizations and dialogues that Western countries can have great influence like
United States (UN), G7, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), and Asia-Europe Summit.
Economy: International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank (WB), World Trade Organization (WTO), bilateral free trade
agreements (FTAs), the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the Dollar System, the Asian Development Bank (ADB), Western
transnational enterprise;
Security: the UN Security Council, and regional security order and bilateral alliances;
Society: UN-linked organizations, UN-linked treaties and issue-specific functional regimes in such areas as transport,
education, culture, accounting, customs and institutions to promote human rights and democracy.
Engines
American power and the leadership of Western countries and Western values such as cooperation, development,
freedom, Western culture recognition, democratization and the protection of human rights.
Principle
Liberal internationalism
Source: Author’s compilation, based on Mazarr et al. (2016, p. 14).
 ASIAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE 5

Table 2. The Typology of Approaches.

Approach Principle Engine Element Issue
Status Quo + + + +
Parallel Supplement + + + −
Nested Enhancement + + − +
Regime Shifting + − − +
Competitive Regime Creation + − − +
Ideological Confrontation − − − +
Note: The accepting is marked as ‘+’ and rejecting is marked as ‘−’. The reversal level is sequenced as ‘−’ > ‘+’.

a shortage of funds. Another such issue is how the COVID-19 pandemic raises questions
about the capability of global health governance and has become an urgent global issue.
These vacuum issues are awaiting start-ups and innovations rather than reforms within
an institution or one system (Sun, 2016).

The approaches to global order

What are states’ roles and approaches to the global order? Since redistribution is not the
only goal for states, the pursuit for recognition requires states to think about how inter-
mediate or supplementary options present more moderate, complex and hidden oppor-
tunities to gain them respect, prestige and reputation. The typologies of status quo and
revisionism or solo revisionism are too broad, so this paper applies a typological meth-
odology (Elman, 2005) to uncover a more systematic picture of the approaches (see Table
2). There are three variables that distinguish the six approaches: global order, issue and
behaviour. The global order consists of the sub-variables of the principle, engine and
element, and the issue can be either existing or vacuum. The behaviour can accept or
reject the components of the global order and the current issues. The revision level
goes down when the object of rejection goes from the principle to the engine, element
and issue in sequence. Therefore, this paper sequences the approaches based on their
revision levels from large to small as: Ideological Confrontation > Competitive Regime
Creation > Regime Shifting > Nest Enhancement > Parallel Supplement > Status Quo.
The Status Quo approach in this paper shares the same definition as Johnston’s. Status
quo powers tend to integrate more deeply into the international community. These
countries can be in different situations. They can be small countries that strongly
depend on other countries for trade, investment and security to benefit from functional
efficiency. Some Status quo countries are rising powers that benefit from the current
order and therefore want to be better socialized into the world community to obtain
profits and to expand influence. Status quo countries may also be those that win from
the current global system and wish to maintain their leadership and privileges. Accord-
ingly, their purpose ranges from keeping a low profile to playing a responsible role, and
from surviving and striving for development to pursuing superior in the institutional
arrangements (Keohane, 1989).

. Status Quo is an approach where states accept both the global order and the current
issue. This approach is reflected when states adhere to and actively participate in inter-
national regimes like the UN, IMF, and ADB which are advocated by the Western
6 L. LIU

countries and when they comply with international norms such as human rights and
free trade arrangements like TPP. These states usually have no intention of challenging
the current balance of power and norm values and try to pursue and maintain their
recognition by others in the international community.

The ‘issue’ is the one condition that is always neglected when discussing the approach
to the global order; however, it is a very important condition for understanding China’s
policy. The current global order is comprehensive but not complete. Following the same
logic as upgrading in market order, states could also rearrange the on-going global order
by innovating and filling in gaps. The vacuum issues give more room for countries,
especially emerging powers to operate and to show their strength on the world stage.
The approach, in this case, is:

. Parallel Supplement: supplementary regimes are created to meet new challenges such
as infrastructure demand, global public health crisis, economic recession and protec-
tionism, and to promote the integration of some regions that are still fragmental and
lack close connection. Instead of being rule breakers, such states are rule innovators
through their institutional innovation to the construction of global order. Since this
approach is not opposed to the principle, engine and elements of the current global
order, such states can remove doubts from other countries and are easily accepted.
This shows, on many occasions, that public goods can increase the prestige of the
provider.

When considering the revisionism, it is necessary to consider the degrees of revision

and the conditions when states revise the global order through internal or external
means. Some countries free ride on public goods from Western powers and embrace
the norms of cooperation and freedom in the international system, but they still perceive
some unsatisfying arrangements. These countries still follow the default engine of
Western leadership and norms, but they try to reform and promote part of the insti-
tutions and regimes at the element level of global order. This approach is defined as
Nested Enhancement, a form intermediate between status quo and revisionism. Nested
Enhancement caters to states’ demand and helps them obtain more prestige, status
and respect since they have gained the ability to increase their voices in the international
order.

. Nested enhancement means that new set practices are grafted onto existing institutions
to improve their full governance capabilities. Nested Enhancement doesn’t have a
strong adversarial attitude to the current order. It approves of some elements of the
institutional arrangements led by Western countries but manages to settle any draw-
backs and defects using internal reforms and agenda-setting. One example is the
linkage of the East Asian Foreign Exchange Reserve Pool as a regional surveillance
mechanism with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), whereby crisis countries
could access emergency credit only after having adhered to IMF conditionality.

However, existing regimes are criticized for being stubborn and not open to demands
for adjustment so long as there is no change in the engine of power distribution or norm
 ASIAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE 7

value. Historical institutionalism states that institutional drift could happen if an insti-
tution fails to accommodate to the new changes and thus becomes ineffective (Streeck
& Thelen, 2005). The demand for power redistribution, effectiveness and divergent inter-
ests would encourage unsatisfied countries to search for alternative options. Morse and
Keohane (2014) define this behaviour as Contested Multilateralism. Compared with
Nested Enhancement, the approaches of searching for external regimes intend to dimin-
ish the utility of the existing power distribution or norm values, and thus rejects both the
engine and the element of the current global order. Under the type Contested Multilater-
alism are two sub-types—Regime Shifting and Competitive Regime Creation—that differ
in their degree of revision.

. Regime Shifting occurs when states or state coalitions shift to another existing insti-
tutional forum with a more favourable mandate or decision rules to reinforce
regime complexity, undermine the authority of the original institutions and thus
redistribute the power of institutional arrangement on a specific issue. The approach
of supporting an alternative regime sometimes can be hidden because the real inten-
tion may not be easily recognized, while some actions are even be supported by
Western powers. One example of this approach is shifting by developing countries
of the free trade system from the WTO to regional and bilateral cooperation where
developing countries have more bargaining leverage than developed countries.
. Competitive Regime Creation occurs when challenging coalitions or states create new
formal or informal forums, channels or networks that represent their interests and
challenge the existing norms or power distribution. Compared with Regime Shifting,
this approach is a head-on confrontation with the element and engine of the existing
order. Morse and Keohane (2014) give an example of how Germany, Denmark and
Spain established the International Renewable Energy Association (IRENA) to chal-
lenge the status quo of the International Energy Agency (IEA), which has not
catered to the demand for renewable energy sources.

The last approach is the Ideological Confrontation, which challenges the essential prin-
ciple of the liberal global order. The principle of liberal internationalism is the essential
component generating the values and concrete elements of the Western-dominant global
order. However, just as Sallach (1974) stressed, this belief would be increasingly fragmen-
ted and inconsistent as the dominant class descends. The principle of liberal internation-
alism is questioned when ‘good capitalism goes bad’ (Bruff, 2014). In this case,
increasingly unsatisfied states could confront the ideological hegemony.

. Ideological Confrontation is an approach where a state or state coalition put forward a

new principle that is ideologically confrontational to the existing principle. This
approach will accordingly change the engines and elements as the form of the
global order and thus completely turn over the global order. The representative
example is how the Soviet Union created socialist world governance with the principle
of communist, a world system with values of the dictatorship of the proletariat, anti-
imperialism, peaceful coexistence and collective leadership, constituted in elements
like World Peace Congress (WPC), the Council of Mutual Economic Assistance
8 L. LIU

(CMEA) and the socialist alliance. Islamism is currently is another example of how
states take the approach of ideological confrontation to lead a distinct world order.

The roles countries play on the world stage depend on the approaches states choose. Is
China a status quo or revisionist when implementing the BRI? This paper further devel-
ops four roles a state can play in the global order. It assumes that countries which tend to
keep the Status Quo are rule takers, the ones who do Parallel Supplement are rule inno-
vators, those which favour Nested Enhancement are rule reformers, and those which use
the approaches of Contested Multilateralism and Ideological Confrontation are rule
breakers. Among the four roles, the rule taker is the same role as a status quo power
and the rule breaker is revisionist. The creative idea of this paper is that there is a
third role of rule innovator and an intermediate role of rule reformer between the two
traditional roles of status quo and revisionist.

Case selection: BRI event clusters

Previous studies usually examine some contents of the BRI, such as the AIIB, the railway
constructions and the internationalizing of RMB. However, they fail to determine which
are the implementations of the BRI emphasized in the official documents and which
weigh more in practical actions. This paper argues that it is necessary to determine the
representative cases of the BRI based on both text and actual events. Meanwhile, it
argues that many case clusters are better than an individual case to represent the BRI.
For example, the establishment of the AIIB, the Silk Road Fund and BRICS’s New Devel-
opment Bank (NDB) actually belong to the same case cluster of building a new kind of
financial platform. No single case could represent the BRI but one type of case cluster can
be more significant in explaining the real behaviour of the BRI if the event repeats fre-
quently. Therefore, this paper attempts to evaluate the approach of the BRI with a case
cluster that can offer systematic meanings for the BRI analysis than can an individual
case.
The event data of this paper comes from the ‘Belt and Road Portal’, a data portal auth-
orized by the Office of the Leading Group on Promoting the Implementation of the BRI
of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC). The BRI portal covers
most of the interactions of states with China concerning the BRI from official websites
and newspapers since September 2016. Although including some events from the inter-
national news source could enhance my analysis, the BRI portal authorized by the
Chinese government is not perfect but still a better dataset than the fragmented and
numerous information with different languages and difference sources worldwide. BRI
events in this data portal are presented using unstructured news articles and are classified
into five categories: policy coordination, infrastructure connectivity, trade link, financial
integration, and people-to-people bond. For example, China and Switzerland signed the
BRI agreement in 2019, an event belonging to policy coordination and recorded by a
news article with title, full text and date information. During the period from 1 Septem-
ber 2016–17 July 2018, 1,229 articles indicated 1,889 events originally from 126 infor-
mation sources, including government websites and official and private newspapers
and websites. The coding follows the steps below:
 ASIAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE 9

(1) Designing a BRI Index with five categories and 26 sub-categories based on four
official documents.
(2) Going through the title and full text (if necessary) of the news article to abstract the
event.
(3) Comparing the event abstract with the BRI Index based on the description and
example practices and classifying the event into the 26 BRI sub-categories.
(4) Counting the event frequency of each BRI category and selecting the representative
BRI event categories.
(5) Identifying the approach of each BRI event category with the indicators of com-
ponents of global order, issue and behaviour.
(6) Repeating the coding procedure again after three months to improve the intrarater
reliability (Belur et al., 2018).

This paper has designed the BRI Index based on two official documents released in
2015 and 2017 and two keynotes speeches of Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2013.
The primary source is the official document released in May 2017 titled ‘Building the
Belt and Road: Concept, Practice and China’s Contribution’, a well-developed and com-
plete document clarifying the content of the BRI. This twenty-page document elaborates
the implementations of the BRI with some descriptions and example practices. However,
this document is inadequate because that the descriptions do not fit precisely with the
common classification of the BRI with five categories of policy coordination, infrastruc-
ture connectivity, trade link, financial integration and people-to-people bond. The sol-
ution of this paper was to include another three vital documents. One is the first
official declaration of the BRI, released in March 2015 as ‘Vision and Actions on
Jointly Building the Silk Road Economic Belt and twenty-first Century Maritime Silk
Road’ which structures the main concepts of the BRI. The other two are the keynote
speeches Chinese President Xi Jinping gave in Kazakhstan and Indonesia when he first
proposed the idea of the BRI in 2013. By comparing the four documents and looking
for patterns and meaning the BRI, this paper designs a BRI Index with 26 sub-categories
of the five connectivities, severing as my coding scheme of the event data (see supplemen-
tary materials for the BRI Index).
Following the coding steps and criteria, the BRI index was applied to code the 1,889
BRI events this paper collects into these 26 case clusters. After selecting the representative
case clusters under the categories of five connectivities based on the event frequency,
eight types of representative case clusters were selected (see Figure 1) that weigh 74
percent of total event cases. In the next session, this paper uses the congruence analysis
(Blatter & Blume, 2008), following the pathway of pattern-matching investigation, to
evaluate what kinds of approaches the BRI takes to the global order (Seawright &
Gerring, 2008).

The approaches of the BRI case clusters

The analysis part goes through the details of each case cluster and then identifies the
global order components and the issues to which these events correspond to, the behav-
iour of accepting or rejecting the global order and issue of each event. Based on the
10 L. LIU

Figure 1. The case clusters of BRI events.

Note: the selected case clusters are marked with ‘*’. The size of each block represents the weight of each case cluster.

typology of six approaches and the analysis of each case cluster, Table 3 shows the result
of approaches taken by the BRI to the current global order.

Multilateral mechanism
The case cluster of the multilateral mechanism includes several implementations to
promote BRI cooperation by supporting the existing multilateral mechanism and
creating a new regional and global regime. One approach for this case cluster is
Regime Shifting. Among the 19 multilateral mechanisms coded in this cluster,
eleven are regional regimes that exclude Western countries and target developing
countries in Asia and Africa. These regional regimes, such as China-AU strategic dia-
logue and China-ASEAN meeting, are seen as exclusive institutional balancing tools
that alienate the U.S. and other Western countries (He, 2015). China’s actively engage-
ment in and support for these regimes helps it gain more influence through its ‘charm
offensive’ (Callahan, 2016) and also complicates the global order from unipolarity to a
multipolarity. Since China intends to support the alternative regimes to balance the
US-dominated power distribution, this multilateral mechanism is a typical approach
of regime shifting. Meanwhile, Nested Enhancement is also an approach of the case
cluster of the multilateral mechanism, which corresponds with what Chinese President
Xi Jinping (2014, pp. 311–319) said about the BRI being open, inclusive and non-con-
frontational with current regimes. There are some BRI events in inter-regional and
Table 3. Identification of the Approach for the BRI Case Clusters.
EVENT CLUSTER APPROACH PRINCIPLE ENGINE ELEMENT ISSUE
Multilateral mechanism Regime Shifting + − Power distribution − Global and regional multilateral 1 Politics
regimes
Nested Enhancement + + Power distribution − Global and regional multilateral 1 Politics
regimes
Facilitating transport Regime Shifting + − Power distribution − Land transport connections 1 Transport
Status Quo + + Power distribution; Value of global + Air and sea transport connections 1 Transport
connection
Promoting transport infrastructure Parallel Supplement + + Power distribution; value of + Transport infrastructures 0 Infrastructure
projects development deficit
Building the BRI free trade zone network Status Quo + + Power distribution; value of free + Bilateral free trade agreements 1 Trade
trade (FTAs)
Regime Shifting + − Power distribution − Regional free trade agreements 1 Trade
Expanding production capacity Status Quo + + Power distribution; + Capacity cooperation 1 Industry
consensus value of globalization

ASIAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE

Building a new type of financial Competitive Regime + − Power distribution − Financial Platform 1 Finance
platforms Creation 0 Infrastructure
deficit
Cooperation on financial institutions and Nested Enhancement + + Power distribution; value of free − Financial agenda 1 Finance
financial markets market
Regime Shifting + − Western norms − Financial regulation 1 Finance
Educational and cultural cooperation Status Quo + + Power distribution; value of + Educational and cultural 1 Education and
communication cooperation mechanism culture
Regime Shifting + − Western culture recognition − Culture cooperation mechanism 1 Culture
Note: accepting is marked as ‘+’ and rejecting as ‘−’. The existing issue is marked ‘1’ and the vacuum issue ‘0’.

11
12 L. LIU

global regimes, including the APEC Summit, Asia-Europe Summit and the UN, where
Western countries generally have more say. Rather than confronting the existing
power distribution and principle, the basic idea of this kind of events is to rearrange
the current elements of the global order by grafting the BRI project onto the existing
agenda. For example, in March 2017, China’s landmark concept of building ‘a human
community with shared destiny’ was incorporated into a UN Security Council
resolution.

Facilitating transport
The case cluster of transport facilitation refers to BRI events that facilitate international
transport by road, ocean and air by unifying transnational transport lines, simplifying
customs procedures and aligning transport standards. These events are described as
‘soft connectivity’ that correspond with the liberal value of global cooperation. Most
BRI events about facilitating transport relate to Eurasian railway freight connections,
comprising 115 of 155 events. The promotion of a Eurasian railway connection, the
flagship of inland transport cooperation, is through the approach of Regime Shifting.
The overland transport routes are seen as alternative networks that secure China’s econ-
omic lifeline by reducing the dependence on maritime choke-points in the Strait of
Malacca and the South China Sea (Yu, 2018). The Eurasian rail networks like the
Chongqing-Duisburg line (2011) and Chengdu-Lodz line (2012) were regular trade
routes before the BRI. These Eurasian rail networks should thus be existing regimes
rather than the vacuum issue that constructs the leading indicator of Parallel Supplement.
Overland transport lacked sufficient attention before China proposed the BRI; however,
since 2013, old railway operations have been rebranded as an early centrepiece of the BRI,
and many new railway projects bloom have been quickly initiated. Nowadays,
accompanied by more frequent and regular freight, Eurasian railway operations
involve roughly 33 countries in my coded events, covering many regions in Europe
and Asia in transporting food, manufactured goods and high-tech products from,
across or back to China. Beyond the traditional China-Europe routes, the rail lines
have expanded greatly into the East, Southeast and South of Asia. The Pan-Europe Rail-
ways and South Asia Trains present a chance for China to play a bridge connecting Japan,
South Korea, Vietnam, Singapore and Thailand with European countries’ inland trans-
portation. Therefore, Eurasian railways should be defined as existing alternative
regimes where China can increase its authority and reputation in Eurasia. As well as
railway connections, the events of facilitating air and sea transport and simplifying trans-
port procedures correspond with the traditional transport and custom cooperation, and
the countries covered are quite global without specific inclination. These events should be
defined as a Status Quo, which, however, is not the primary approach compared with
Regime Shifting in this case cluster of facilitating transport.

Promoting transport projects

Targeting ‘hard connectivity’, the promotion of transport projects is to construct trans-
port infrastructure projects in Asia, Africa and Europe. The distinguishing feature of the
case cluster of ‘hard connectivity’ is to fill Eurasia’s infrastructure gap. Therefore, the
 ASIAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE 13

approach of the Parallel Supplement is very significant in promoting transport projects.

The events of promoting transport do not demonstrate an intention to reject the inter-
national transportation management of the current global order but it is targeted at the
issue of transport infrastructure, a vacuum issue. Although ADB is working on transport
infrastructure, it can only provide ten billion dollars annually, while the estimated
amount needed is 730 billion dollars a year by 2020 (Lu et al., 2015). There is a big
gap in the financing, planning and coordinating infrastructure projects across Eurasia.
China’s economic miracle indicates that infrastructure is likely to be fundamental in fos-
tering development and cooperation. However, infrastructure deficit is a significant
barrier to economic growth for many Eurasian countries sandwiched between developed
Western Europe and emerging East Asian economies. Lack of smooth movement is an
important reason for uneven development speed and opportunities between inland
and coastal areas, when maritime routes are still the primary means of transportation
(Jean-Pierre, 2016). Studies (Sárvári & Szeidovitz, 2016) show that only 3.0–3.5
percent of the total trade between East Asia and Europe is via railroads, mainly
because of higher transportation cost arising from inadequate quality infrastructure. In
this sense, the BRI is providing a Parallel Supplement to the international economic
architecture by working on the ‘hard infrastructure’ of building airports, railways, high-
ways, bridges, ports and urban railways to fill Eurasia’s massive infrastructure gap.

Building the BRI free trade zone network

The case cluster of building the BRI free trade zone network consists of events that
conduct trade agreements with countries along the BRI to create more inclusive free
trade. There are two kinds of events under the cluster of free trade. One is China’s
efforts to promote bilateral free trade agreements (FTAs) with both developed and devel-
oping countries, which this paper defines as an approach of Status Quo, because this
behaviour corresponds to the elements of existing global order and norm values of
trade liberalization, transparency and non-discrimination; it seems that China is open
to promoting FTAs with any country. The other kind of events is about China’s engage-
ment in regional FTAs such as the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership
(RCEP) and China- Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) FTA negotiation. Several scholars
(Huang, 2016; Johnson, 2016) believe that China’s efforts to remove trade and investment
barriers is a self-defence against the intentional exclusion of China from TPP lead by the
United States. It appears in many statements that the BRI is endeavouring to create an
inclusive, open, equitable multilateral trading regime in response to the lack of progress
in trade liberalization talks under the WTO. Accordingly, it is an approach of Regime
Shifting for China to increase its influence by supporting regional free trade zones that
exclude the Western countries.

Expanding production capacity consensus

The events under the cluster of expanding production capacity consensus are to encou-
rage Chinese industries to go abroad and to attract more foreign investment to China
that can advance the capacity of China to cooperate with the BRI countries. This case
cluster is a Status Quo approach. Capacity cooperation is one of the elements of the
14 L. LIU

current liberal global order that has benefited China much in the past decades; the value
of globalization under the capacity cooperation would be an impetus for China which
desperately needs industrial upgrading. China does not show any strong dissatisfaction
with the power distribution and the liberal values in these events. With record levels
of foreign capital inflows and export growth, China and some other large emerging econ-
omies have transformed into ‘the state in the middle’ (Kaplinsky & Farooki, 2010). These
states are eager to upgrade their industries by investing in and trading with countries in
the lower value chains as well as attracting more investments in the higher value chains of
global production networks. The coded events also show that China very actively pro-
motes trade and investment cooperation with any country, whether Western countries,
emerging powers and developing countries (Jones, 2020). For example, Western
countries such as Germany, the United Kingdom and Switzerland, have signed many
trade and investment agreements that create more jobs for these countries and also
provide advanced technology for China to advance its ‘Made in China 2025’. With the
rapid growth in trade and investment between China and Latin America, the Chinese
market is taken as an essential ‘stabilizer’ for Latin America, according Osvaldo
Rosales, director of the International Trade and Integration Division of the Economic
Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) (M. Du, 2017). Besides
dealing with a traditional issue like industry, these events also support the principle,
engine and element of global order. Therefore, the approach is Status Quo.

Building a new type of financial platforms

China has initiated and led several financial mechanisms, including Asian Infrastructure
and Investment Bank (AIIB), the Silk Road Fund and BRICS’s New Development Bank
(NDB). Competitive Regime Creation is the approach for these platforms. Power distri-
bution is the main difference between these financial platforms and existing regimes
like the WB and ADB. For example, the majority of shareholdings in AIIB are developing
countries, with China having 26.6 percent of voting power, followed by India with 7.6
percent and Russia with 6 percent. In contrast, the majority in the ADB are developed
countries, where both Japan and the United States hold 15.6 percent of the total share-
holdings. However, the AIIB offers the world’s first infrastructure-dedicated multilateral
development bank (MDB). The approach of these financial platforms becomes more com-
plicated because they are targeted at infrastructure construction, which is a vacuum issue
because of a lack of attention, sufficient funding and effective institutions (Loke, 2018;
Yuan, 2018). Except for differences in power distribution and project selection with
existing financial platforms, the MDBs initiated by China are identical to existing
financial institutions in their governance, such as operational policy, sovereign-backed
loans and guarantee pricing policy, procurement policy, information policy, and environ-
mental and social framework (Wilson, 2019). Instead of competing with existing regimes,
new banks like the AIIB are declared to be open and inclusive financing institutions.
Written into the Articles of Agreement of the AIIB is that that membership in it shall
be open to members of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development or
the ADB. In many projects, the AIIB acts as a junior partner to join projects led by the
WB and ADB (Wilson, 2019). For these reasons, the revision level of these financial
platforms is diluted compared to the typical approach of competitive regime creation.
 ASIAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE 15

Cooperating financial institutions and financial markets

China encourages Chinese financial institutions to take part in BRI projects and to
cooperate with other institutions in the world market. The events of this cluster are
firstly through the approach of Nested Enhancement: China tries to graft BRI projects
onto the agenda of existing financial institutions and markets. For example, the China
Development Bank (CDB) has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with
Deutsche Bank to finance BRI projects and BRI countries. Several transnational bank
giants like Standard Chartered Bank (SCB) are also very active in competition to finance
BRI projects. All of these events demonstrate that China accepts the engine of the global
order by respecting the value of free financial market and cooperating with Western
powers; meanwhile the BRI agenda has been successfully grafted to the institutional
arrangement of existing global order. However, what should be noticed here is that BRI
activities in this case cluster sometimes deliberately violate existing global financial regu-
lations. China’s policy banks are the overwhelming majority in financing BRI overseas pro-
jects, while MDBs such as the AIIB are marginal players. Jones (2020) points out that many
regulations that constrain these dominant financiers remain broad, loose and below inter-
national standards. In order to maximize the reputation payoff, Reilly (2012) explains that
one approach for China regarding foreign assistance is to propose alternative standards of
non-interference and respect for the independence, national sovereignty and identity that
distinguish it from the norms promoted by developed countries. Similarly, Adolph et al.
(2017) find that China’s downplaying of regulations such as labour and environment pro-
tection could create a ‘Shanghai Effect’ whereby some counterpart countries no longer have
the impetus to improve their domestic regulatory standards. Therefore, some events under
this case cluster challenge Western-dominated norms and thus come under the approach
of Regime Shifting.

Educational and cultural cooperation

The case cluster of promoting educational and cultural cooperation includes providing
scholarships, signing agreements, setting up Chinese culture centres and Confucius Insti-
tutes, holding cultural Expos and festivals, and providing aid to protect cultural heritage.
Educational and cultural cooperation is a method of public diplomacy whereby China
expands its soft influence and foster understanding of its policy. The approach in this
case cluster is Status Quo because these events follow the trend of globalization and
are open to any country. There are over 90 countries coded in this cluster, and many tra-
ditional instruments of public diplomacy are utilized, including cooperation regarding
cultural relics, languages, music, art, food, sports, media and literature. However, the cul-
tural events with the theme of ‘Silk Road’ in Eurasia come under the approach of Regime
Shifting. Although the ancient Silk and Road did promote economic connectivity and
cultural prosperity, cultural ties along the Eurasian continent have fragmented in more
recent centuries. The BRI is trying to revive the shared memory of the ancient Silk
and Road that facilitated exchanges in trade, scientific knowledge and cultural practices,
under the spirit of mutual respect and trust. The Silk and Road narrative does not reject
the cultural cooperation mechanism of the global order but it is an approach that shifts
the cultural recognition of Eurasia from the Western culture to Oriental culture and thus
16 L. LIU

improve the cultural confidence of this area. For example, in 2014 the World Heritage
List inscribed the Silk Road Heritage Corridor for Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and China.
Such heritage preservation is a traditional way for cultural cooperation but it is
changes the political impetus for the cultural collaboration of BRI countries (Winter,
2016); thus Kazakhstan’s president Nursultan Nazarbayev said on November 2015 that
‘ … we can best counter extremism through inter-cultural and inter-religious dialogue
(UNESCO, 2015 Nov)’.

Discussion
Figure 2 summarizes the approaches of the BRI case clusters. Its left side lists the
approaches from top to bottom with their revision levels in ascending order. We can
see that Status Quo and Regime Shifting are the two dominant approaches. The approach
of Status Quo is reflected in China’s efforts to facilitate international transportation, free
trade, capacity cooperation, and global education and culture exchange. Regime Shifting
is a significant approach in several respects, such as: China’s promotion of some regional
political and trade regimes that exclude Western countries and target developing
countries; the enhancement of overland transport routes to reduce the dependence on
maritime choke-points in the Strait of Malacca and the South China Sea; China’s empha-
sis on the guidelines of respect for sovereignty in South-South cooperation that is distin-
guished from enforcement by the West; and efforts to revive the Eurasian culture

Figure 2. The approaches and the BRI case clusters.

 ASIAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE 17

memory. Therefore, we can conclude that China plays the roles of both rule taker and
rule breaker when implementing the BRI, which accords with several studies that
claim that rising powers are support some aspects of the current global order and
contest others (Jones, 2020; Loke, 2018; Paradise, 2016; Yuan, 2018).
However, the role played by China goes beyond the binary outlook of rule taker and
rule breaker. China now practices skilful institutional statecraft with a range of options to
advance its interests. China has emerged as a key institution builder, evidenced by the
establishment of the AIIB. The vast infrastructure deficit of Eurasia gives China a
chance to play the role of rule innovator with the approach of Parallel Supplement.
China is sometimes also a rule reformer to put the BRI onto the agenda of the existing
multilateral and financial regimes that could help legitimize the BRI. Besides, as shown
by Figure 2, the revision level of the BRI remains moderate. The approaches of Status
Quo, Parallel Supplement and Nested Enhancement occupy over half of all approaches
the BRI applies, either agreeing with all components of the global order or targeting
the vacuum issue or the element of the global order. China resorts to the approach of
Regime Shifting more often than Competitive Regime Creation because supporting an
alternative regime is more acceptable than the head-on confrontation of creating a com-
petitive regime. Setting up a new regime usually requires a lot of effort to establish legiti-
macy on the world stage, which explains why China encourages developed countries to
join the AIIB and why the AIIB follows many of the governance practices of other MDBs.
The findings in this paper suggest that we need a more inclusive attitude to the behav-
iour of emerging powers because there are several approaches on the spectrum of states’
behaviour with status quo and revisionism at the poles. The interpretation of the global
order should consider the novel dynamics of the current era. Status quo literally means in
Latin ‘the situation at which (we are at present)’. Womack (2015) proposes a new term of
status ad quem, or ‘the situation to which (we are moving in the future)’. International
normalcy is no longer the status quo of the post-Cold War era. Western influence,
especially the solidity of American hegemony, is eroding. The post-hegemonic era fea-
tures diverse norms and values, the multi-layers of international actors, and the emerging
influence and leadership of countries like China. While the United States is unlikely to be
a leader in promoting a new status ad quem because its policies and self-regard are
embedded in its all-powerful and arbitrary hegemony, a status ad quem power would
be one whose policies are appropriate and sustainable in the emerging new order. The
global public health crisis triggered by the COVID-19 outbreak is a good example of
testing a status ad quem power that can responsibly take the driver seat of global
health governance. Therefore, even though some emerging powers like China may not
play as the status quo, it is still arbitrary defining them as revisionist powers. Several
implementations of the BRI are appropriate to the trend of the new era, such as filling
infrastructure gaps and addressing the uneven development between inland and
coastal areas.

Conclusion
What are the roles China plays, and what approaches does China take to the global order?
Departing from a low-profile strategy, China now resorts to more active, confident and
creative approaches to advance its economic benefits and expand political influence. This
18 L. LIU

paper rejects the popular but singular and static view of the roles of states by traditional
realists and liberalists that takes the states as either status quo or revisionist in response to
the distribution of power. The notion of redistribution and recognition are both crucial
motivations of state behaviour. Meanwhile, it is necessary to consider the revision levels
when states’ actions target different components and issues in the global order. There-
fore, this paper introduces more subtle state roles by distinguishing Status Quo, Parallel
Supplement, Nested Enhancement, Regime Shifting, Competitive Regime Creation and
Ideological Confrontation. The theoretical framework of approaches that this paper
develops contributes to an analysis of states’ behaviour towards the global order, and
especially to further interpreting the behaviour of emerging powers. By designing the
BRI Index and coding the case cluster, this paper distinguishes the content of the BRI
in rhetoric and practice, and provides a new way to identify the representative case of
the BRI.
According to this paper’s analysis, we can conclude that the approaches of the Status
Quo and Regime Shifting are very significant in the BRI events, indicating that China
supports the current global order in many aspects but also competes with Western
countries in power redistribution and non-Western value reviving. Competitive
Regime Creation is the China’s approach for building a new type of financial platform,
but the revision level is diminished due to China’s inclusive attitude. The approach of
Nested Nnhancement and Parallel Supplement that the BRI implements show that
there are soft ways for China to raise its recognition without challenging the existing
global order. When implementing the BRI, China plays multiple roles in the world
stage as rule taker, rule reformer, rule breaker and rule innovator. The distinct finding
of this paper is that China also plays another role as rule innovator to fill the gaps
between the current order and unsolved and emerging global issues, an aspect ignored
in other studies about China’s role for the world.
The findings of this paper present a clearer picture of approaches applied by the BRI
and the role of China. The BRI is a cornerstone of Xi Jinping’s foreign policy and covers a
range of activities in policy coordination, infrastructure connectivity, trade links,
financial integration, and people-to-people exchanges. Therefore, the analysis of the
BRI in this paper gives us some hints on interpreting China’s foreign policy in
general. Compared with China’s previously passive ‘low-profile’ strategy, China has
more confident and active engagement in global governance. China often insists on its
socialization and commitment to the liberal global order, which has been proved to be
an effective way of promoting its peaceful rise and increasing its reputation and legiti-
macy (Johnston, 2003; Sohn, 2012). Meanwhile, China portrays itself as a responsible
power distinct from the Western great powers and oriented toward the notion of
South-South solidarity. These distinct features do not mean that China is taking the
approach of head-on confrontation with the current global order. Instead, the analysis
of this paper proves that incremental reform is its theme because China’s approach is
a moderate revision of the global order.
Due to time limits, my study only examined the BRI’s implementation in its first few
years. Nevertheless, the BRI strategy reveals a wide range of flexibility in adapting its
agendas during interactions with the world. Wilson (2019) advances evidence to prove
that the AIIB has transformed from a revisionist institution first proposed in 2013 to a
collaborator with the World Bank and ADB. All the revisionist elements within
 ASIAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE 19

China’s initial proposal have been removed. For example, China’s shareholding has been
diluted dramatically since many developed countries joined in; the AIIB also has adopted
more transparent and rule-based governance practices; loans were to be issued in USD
instead of RMB. The comparison of the second BRI forum in 2019 with the first in
2017 indicates China’s openness to constructive criticism and its willingness to
improve the quality of BRI implementation. The transition shows that China is balancing
its mixed motivations of interest seeking and status-seeking. The BRI starts with an
imposed grand design that reflects China’s original intention to reshape the global and
regional order in its favour. However, growing criticism and scepticism from the rest
of the world led China to operate the BRI through negotiated compromise to accommo-
date the demands and interests of other countries, especially the developed powers.
Nevertheless, the negotiated compromise secures the broad-based international legiti-
macy of the BRI. The Chinese strategy and the implementation of the BRI are a develop-
ing process. Participating states are shaping the implementation of the BRI. How do the
roles of China and the approaches of the BRI evolve within interaction with the world?
This is a question worth exploring in future studies.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributor
Dr. Lina Liu is a post-doc at the Department of International Relations, Tsinghua University. She
achieves her Doctor of Art degree from Center for Comparative and International Studies of Swiss
Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH). Her work focus on China’s foreign policies and
interactions other countries. She is working on a project about the impact of China’s ‘Belt and
Road Initiative’.

ORCID
Lina Liu http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3329-8662

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