China’s Pursuit of the “One Belt One Road” Initiative: A New World Order with Chinese Characteristics?

Abstract

Li Xing places the “One Belt One Road” (OBOR) initiative in the thematic context of the international political economy and includes the debates between different schools of international relations (IR) theories on emerging powers. The chapter functions as a general background setting, providing historical, IR and IPE frameworks for a holistic understanding of the rise of China and the OBOR initiative as an inherent part of the continuous expansion of the capitalist world system. One of the essential “messages” from this chapter is that China’s rise and its OBOR initiative are challenging the existing “global arrangements” and the “structural power” of the existing order.