What is China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)? To understand China's developmental strategy, its important to consider both China's unique economic structure and its infrastructure network on its own terms, not just as a threat to the United States or legal internationalism. 
I taught China's developmental strategy last week. My students began by reading Mark Wu's China Inc. Wu's work is so clear in showing that this is not just about Chinese state capitalism, bur a complex network involving private firms & Party-state control. harvardilj.org/wp-content/upl…
Wu explains how China Inc. came after China's accession to the WTO. I think Wu's work is crucial to understand, especially considering the WTO's centrality to global economic governance. I'd love to have seen Wu follow up considering the digital silk road (he wrote it in 2015).
The BRI is a complex development project. @MatthewErie describes it as megadevelopment in his extensive work on Chinese development. But I think its important to recognize that the BRI operates on a really different developmental strategy than what we've seen before.
After WW2, the US led legal internationalism - the creation of international rules-based regimes built for liberal, market economies to cooperate w/n a global open economy. Past classes covered new institutional economics, with extensive debates the role of legal institutions.
China's developmental strategy is extremely complex, rather than devoid of law, its a mixture of formal and informal instruments. Best primer is @HengWANG_law forthcoming @trade_review piece which lays out a typology of instruments making up China's BRI. cibel.unsw.edu.au/research/artic…
As Wang explains, China uses a complex network of instruments; some are coordinated with minimal legalization and project-based, which is connected to performance agreements and financing Ks. On top of this is the international engagement with WTO & PTAs (incl foreign investment)
@gregorycshaffer @henrysgao offer the best explanation as to how China's strategy "builds from, layers on, and repurposes existing international economic law." My students really enjoyed this framing for appreciating China's position. academic.oup.com/jiel/article/2…
As finance is a big part of this picture, I invited students to consider Jingyuan Zhou's work on BRI financing, as she unpacks how financing combines Chinese policy banks and the State-owned commercial banks, but also the big multilateral development banks for co-financing.
An important point here is that whereas the IFIs require capital-seeking states to adopt legal reforms (in line with Washington Consensus), the AIIB is governed by the principle of "non-interference", and the departure from the doctrine of conditionality.
In a past week we had considered research as to how the World Bank shifted from the original commitment to not interfere in the political affairs of States to a more intrusive formula for good governance and market-driven ideals.
Without disqualifying concerns about the lack of attention to social and environmental interests in these infrastructure projects, China is fostering a developmental strategy that sets its own standards, breaking from past consensus on setting standards from the top down.
But my students noted that even that is too simplistic - because as I showed them @SammSacks @gwbstr New American DigiChina project work - China is actively engaged in fostering international standards, especially relevant for AI tech. newamerica.org/cybersecurity-…
So, a big element to the BRI is that it is not just on land and in the sea. Its everywhere and its data. Data sovereignty is connected to all of this and Huawei is leading the 5G standard. Enter @MatthewErie @t_streinz latest on the Beijing Effect. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…
Like @anubradford's Brussels Effect, Streinz/Erie research shows how companies are involved in building, operating, and maintaining transnational data governance, which is all the more complex when you factor in Chinese party state & Chinese tech companies.
For those students interested, further readings @henryfarrell @ANewman_forward weaponised interdependence and @geoffreygertz work on US-China geoeconomics could be factored in.
What I appreciated was how students sought to understand China's developmental strategy as distinct, rather than a threat to the US or Western rules-based systems. We studied many developmental strategies over term, they tried to appreciate each State/region fosters its own path.
Interestingly, students were keen to understand the benefits of experimentation and non-interference. While also cautious of China's political system and China's central place in a hub-and-spoke system. In this context, they discussed the role of industrial policy for development
I know there's more work being done on China's BRI. @mercuriobryan @MarkusAWagner @HengWANG_law all have further work on this. @MatthewErie has been working extensively on Chinese law and development and has a forthcoming piece with HILJ.
I think in studying the BRI, students came away with a better understanding of the norms of Chinese economic governance, the logic of capitalism, importance of addressing HR, labour, & env't concerns, and the difficulty separating security from economics. /end.
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