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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 January 2024
Many analysts have noted that the BRI is missing a map (Narins & Agnew 2020). This is puzzling because mapping is commonly used by the CCP to reshape geopolitical realities according to its nationalistic and stra-tegic priorities: depicting Taiwan as a province, laying claim to the entire South China Sea with the infamous “9 dash- line”, delineating China's Exclusive Economic Zone and claiming sovereignty over the Senkaku/Diaoyutai islands are just the most recent examples of mapping as a way to define where China begins and ends. In addition, maps have been employed to graphically correct historical “mistakes” in China's borders with Vietnam, India and Russia, while today nationalistic circles refer to (ironically western) maps of the Qing dynasty as part of their nostalgia for a time when China ruled all under heaven. Given the systematic use of maps to imagine China in the world and vis- à- vis its neighbours, why is there not an official, definitive map of the BRI? The answer lies in the BRI's gradual evolution from a development initiative on China's periphery to its main global platform for economic relations and diplomacy.
The official narrative states that the BRI was initiated in September 2013, when Xi Jinping publicly promoted the creation of a “Silk Road Economic Belt” with central Asian nations while on an official visit in Astana, Kazakhstan. The following month, he made a similar announcement from Jakarta, calling for a twenty- first- century “Maritime Silk Road” of investment and trade. The Belt and Road appeared for the first time in an official party policy document in November 2013, where setting up new financial institutions and improving infrastructural connectivity with neighbouring countries are stated as aims of the Silk Road Economic Belt and the Maritime Silk Road (Communist Party of China 2013). Its debut in the realm of policy documents was a modest one, given the BRI's subsequent development. The reference to what would evolve into the BRI was hidden at the end of point 26 of China's plans for deepening reform in a paragraph titled “Further opening up inland and border areas”.
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