Classical and Critical Geopolitics of China's Belt and Road Initiative: Examining US/Chinese Discourses on BRI

This research considers the key question around China's Belt and Road Initiative from the perspective of geopolitics - whether it poses a challenge to US hegemony - by examining US and Chinese official/non-official discourses on BRI. It adopts a geopolitical approach, which attempts to overcome the limited view of spatiality in traditional IR (Agnew, 1994), to explore how US and Chinese actors view the geopolitical landscape of BRI as terrain for great power competition (Mearsheimer, 2001) or cooperation (Xi, 2017). Thus, this research offers new perspectives on the debate "Can China Rise Peacefully?", while bridging the gap between the classical and critical branches of geopolitics by combining the realist focus of the former with discourse analysis of the latter. It also brings the "geographies of peace" (McConnell et al, 2014) framework into conversation with the literature on China's rise, exploring different conceptions of peace by the various geopolitical actors. Intertextual discourse analysis (Hansen, 2006) will be undertaken on governmental, academic, and 'grey' literature. Additional interviews with key actors (policymakers, academics and officials) will help to triangulate the discourses identified, as well as their interactions with each other. This will combine both desk research and fieldwork in the USA and China, with the possibility for significant research dissemination across both locales and further afield. Engaging with both theory and policy, this research will make a distinctive contribution to the scholarship on the growing competition between China and America by shedding light on both side's fears and goals around the impact of BRI.