The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) project legitimisation: The rhetor’s innovation and the US response
| Author | Tariq H Malik |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/2057891120959476 |
| Published date | 01 December 2022 |
| Date | 01 December 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Mostly East Asian Politics (including Southeast and Central) |
The Belt and Road Initiative
(BRI) project legitimisation:
The rhetor’s innovation
and the US response
Tariq H Malik
Liaoning University, China; International Centre for Organisation and Innovation Studies,
Singapore
Abstract
The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has attracted support and critique for its legitimacy and potential
success. Its opponents see challenges more than prospects because of American inattention and
resistance, and its proponents see prospects more than challenges because of the attention from the rest
of the world. While both sides use valid reasons for their explicit or implicit views, they focus on the
legitimacy by its taken-for-granted status. The BRI project as innovation is at the legitimisation process
stage. To address the legitimisation of the BRI project innovation, we use rhetorical theory to analyse the
Chinese official report in 2019, the American versus European media response to the B RI project and the
US direct response to the BRI in the Indo-Pacific Strategy in 2019. Our exploratory findings show insights
into the subjects, industries and regions. Firstly, the American media attention far exceeds the European
media attention. Secondly, the American media attention and direct response to the BRI highlight the
political issues, and the European media attention highlights economic issues. The Chinese official report
mentions European countries, and excludes the USA. Thirdly, it uses Pakistan more frequently than
other countries or regions in its achievement report, but the US has not mentioned Pakistan at all in its
Indo-Pacific Strategy. Fourthly, the US political logic diverges from the logic of the BRI project, while the
European economic logic converges to the logic of the BRI project. Based on these findings, we con-
tribute to the legitimisation process of innovation, rhetorical theory and policy implications in the world.
Keywords
American media attention, Belt and Road Initiative, legitimisation process, ‘subjects, industries and
regions’, US-European divergence
Corresponding author:
Tariq H Malik, Management & Policy Studies, Liaoning University, 301 Admin Building, Huanggu District, Shenyang, Liaoning
110136, China.
Email: t.h.malik@lnu.edu.cn
Asian Journal of Comparative Politics
ªThe Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/2057891120959476
journals.sagepub.com/home/acp
2022, Vol. 7(4) 1070–1094
Mostly East Asian Politics (including Southeast and Central)
Introduction
The Belt & Road Initiative (BRI), also known as ‘One-Belt-One-Road’, has attracted two types of
arguments on its prospects and challenges. One argument highlights the scope and size of the BRI
project (Callahan, 2016). One highlights the achievements. By the end of 2019, the project had
64 partner countries, which accounted for 64%of theworld population and 30%of globalGDP (Belt
&RoadNews, 2019). Geographically, the BRI project links three continents through land and sea
routes, offers varieties of infrastructural facilities and contributes to socio-economic, institutional
development.Within the broader framework,the BRI project has producedother institutions, suchas
the AIIB (Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank), which enlisted 100 member countriesin 2019. The
other highlightsits challenges, bringingideas of risks and legitimacy. Itcontends that the BRI project
lacks legitimacybecause the US has ignoredit, and without the US endorsement it faces a legitimacy
issue (Nordin and Weissmann, 2018). American avoidance and subtle resistance undermine its
legitimacy (Brakman et al., 2019; Cheng, 2016; Rolland, 2017). Therefore, despite its size and
scope, the BRI project lacks the taken-for-granted status in the eyes of the US (Rolland, 2017).
Although these accounts inform on some aspects of the BRI project’s legitimacy challenges,
they confuse the legitimisation process with the legitimacy product. This literature raises a valid
question that every innovation needs the legitimacy of the audience, and some of those ideas are
competitors—just like the US is a competitor to China. They confuse the issue because the BRI
project is an innovation going through the legitimisation phase, and this phase requires compatible
analysis of the legitimacy process rather than legitimacy product. This conceptual difference arises
because the taken-for-granted status of an entity implies that it has reached the highest level of
acceptance, and it is no more an innovation (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983; Suchman, 1995). The
BRI project is passing through the legitimisation stages that require subtleties in the relevant
evidence as opposed to incoherent opinions. The incoherence between the focus on the legitimisa-
tion process and evidence from the legitimate product raises questions about the relevant theory to
explain this development.
To address this contentious issue, we narrow the focus of the exploratory analysis of the
legitimisation process and link it to compatible theory and evidence. On the theory side, rhetorical
institutionalism explain s the legitimisation process of inn ovation (Green, 2004; Suddaby and
Greenwood, 2005). The rhetorical theory explains the innovation in a critique-response fashion
at the product, technology, organisation and national levels (Black, 1978). On the evidence side,
we assessed the US media attention to the BRI project and compared it to the European media
attention. As a benchmark, the European media attention to the BRI project fills the incoherence
gap. Together, the rhetorical theory and the American media response formulate the framework in
which the rhetor’s innovation attracts the audience’s criticism. In other words, the Chinese official
report on the BRI project proposes its logic to the world and justifies its role to its audiences by
answering implied questions. In this iterative cycle in the legitimisation process, the rhetor pro-
poses the innovation and the audience may raise questions needing justification (Bitzer, 1968;
Green, 2004; Suddaby and Greenwood, 2005). In this analogy of the rhetor, intermediary com-
munication devices and the audience in rhetorical theory (Black, 1978; Burke, 1966), we introduce
three actors in our framework: China, as the rhetor o f innovation, the US and Europe as the
audience and the media as the intermediary. Therefore, the media, as an intermediary mechanism,
shows the attention level of the audience to the innovation.
Legitimacy scholars place the media between the rhetor and the audience in the legitimisation
process (Deephouse et al., 2008). The scope of the media coverage helps analysts evaluate and
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