From the ancient Silk Road to the belt and road initiative: Narratives, signalling and trust-building
| Published date | 01 May 2021 |
| Date | 01 May 2021 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1369148120987464 |
| Subject Matter | Special Issue: Chinese foreign policy: A Xi change? |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1369148120987464
The British Journal of Politics and
International Relations
2021, Vol. 23(2) 280 –296
© The Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/1369148120987464
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From the ancient Silk Road
to the belt and road initiative:
Narratives, signalling and
trust-building
Yujia Zhao1 and May Tan-Mullins2
Abstract
Narratives help in interpreting and understanding surrounding political realities. Yet, the
divergence of narratives may also create distrust, and it is an important reason for greatly diverging
perceptions of the Belt and Road Initiative between China and the international community. This
article explores how trust can be bridged between different narratives. It discusses the notions
of trust and how the Chinese concept of ‘brightness’ contributes to a strategic signalling process
for trust-building in strategic cooperation. This article proposes that trust-building is a process
of signalling and knowledge building. Only when the signal sent for strategic cooperation fits
the other parties’ knowledge about the sender, can the trust-building process succeed. This
compatibility between signals and developed knowledge can be the result of several rounds of
signalling, in which the signal sender’s honesty regarding their self-interests and intentions is the
necessary pre-condition.
Keywords
ancient Silk Road, BRI, brightness, costly signals, trust-building
Introduction
Narratives help people make sense of the world (Somers, 1994: 606), and in interpreting
and understanding the surrounding political realities (Patterson and Monroe, 1998: 321).
These give people reasons to act (Franzosi, 1998), but at the same time act as ruling tools.
From a post-colonial perspective, Datta-Ray (2015) demonstrates how dominant Western
diplomatic narratives suppress and marginalise India in important areas of international
affairs, and he thus claims the need for India-oriented (non-western) narratives in diplo-
macy. Although China’s contemporary foreign policies are not usually interpreted in
terms of post-colonial narratives, China faces a similar situation to India in suppression
1Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies, School of Politics and Public Administration, Shandong University, China.
2School of International Studies, University of Nottingham Ningbo China
Corresponding author:
May Tan-Mullins, School of International Studies, University of Nottingham Ningbo China, 199 Taikang East
Road, Ningbo 315100, China.
Email: May.tan-mullins@nottingham.edu.cn
987464BPI0010.1177/1369148120987464The British Journal of Politics and International RelationsZhao and Tan-Mullin
research-article2021
Special Issue Article
Zhao and Tan-Mullins 281
and marginalisation in diplomacy, and thus, there is a similar demand for Chinese-oriented
narratives (on the Western-centrism of IR narratives around today’s ‘rising powers’, see
Turner and Nymalm, 2019).
The problems China faces can be illustrated by attitudes surrounding the Belt and
Road Initiative (BRI). From the Chinese perspective, the BRI will enable China to engage
with other fast emerging Asian markets through bilateral infrastructure and trade and
investment cooperation, and allow these Asian countries to tap into China’s huge domes-
tic market (Irshad et al., 2016). While China regards the BRI as a global public good,
believing it will bring huge development to countries within the BRI scope, criticisms of
the intentions and possible impacts of BRI projects have emerged in host countries and
the rest of the world. A report in the Financial Times suggested that there are at least 234
BRI projects suffering setbacks, such as lack of social acceptance (Kynge, 2018).
While many scholars attribute the low social acceptance of the BRI to technical issues
(Baltensperger and Dadush, 2019; Liu and Lim, 2019; Russel and Berger, 2019; Yean,
2018), other scholars point to the divergence in perceptions of the BRI as the result of
different political and economic narratives (Blanchard, 2018; Callahan, 2016; Sidaway
and Woon, 2017). Failures, or slow progress, in project management of international
investments are not rare in the era of globalisation, and do not inevitably have political
consequences. A lack of understanding of the BRI signals from a different narrative back-
ground creates mistrust and misunderstanding (Juan, 2018; Kynge, 2018; Yahuda, 2013).
Yet, as this article will argue, some strategic signals sent through the BRI have received
greater acceptance than others sent through the same channel.
This article aims to address the question of how trust may be bridged across differing
narratives in International Relations (IR) by linking the notion of strategic signalling with
the Chinese concept of ‘brightness’. Specifically, what factors condition the success of
strategic signals for trust-building? It argues that trust in strategic cooperation is the result
of a series of signals and knowledge building where the signal sender’s honesty regarding
self-interests and intentions, acts as the conditional factor.
Following this first introduction, the article will be divided into three further sections.
Section ‘Signalling and trust-building’ discusses the notions of trust and how the strategic
signalling process contributes to trust-building. The third section tests this framework
with two case studies. One is the construction of the ancient Silk Road in around 139–114
B.C.E., when Zhang Qian of the Han dynasty connected China and Central Asia for the
first time. The other is the modern BRI launched in the 2010s. Both cases are regarded as
initiatives by China in changing the regional order, and both encountered, or are encoun-
tering, problems originating from different narrative backgrounds. Section ‘Signalling
with “Brightness”’ concludes by explaining how the theories of strategic signalling and
the notion of brightness could help build trust between China and the rest of the world
regarding the BRI project.
Signalling and trust-building
Trust is an important concept in the field of IR, especially in the processes of conflict
resolution and peace-building between countries. Rousseau et al. (1998: 395) define trust
between two parties as ‘a psychological state comprising the intention to accept vulner-
ability based upon positive expectations of the intentions or behaviour of another’. Others
regard it as a part of rational decision-making preferences in relation to the external envi-
ronment (Hollis, 1998: 14). Hoffman (2002: 366) argues that trust is a willingness to take
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