Jeremy Garlicks book presents a comprehensive and unique theoretic approach based on rich and solid empirical studies to understand the BRI, Chinas flagship foreign policy under President Xi Jinping. The theoretical-methodological framework, or what he calls complex eclecticism in this book, creatively utilizes a set of conceptual stepping stones to bridge the gap between the confusing, multi-regional empirical reality of the BRI and existing grand theories from the IR literature. The result is a remarkable book that both foreign policy observers and international relations scholars cannot afford to miss.
Suisheng Zhao, Professor of International Studies, University of Denver, and Editor, Journal of Contemporary China
A tightly researched, lucid account that should stand out amidst the growing literature on this subject. The book dissects BRIs diverse, often loosely connected, multi-country projects, making the central story accessible to both international affairs specialists and the general reader.
Kishan S. Rana, Honorary Fellow, Institute of Chinese Studies, Delhi; Public Policy Scholar, Woodrow Wilson Centre, Washington DC; former ambassador and diplomat with service in China; served as a joint secretary on the staff of PM Indira Gandhi (198182); author of eleven books on diplomacy
Within the mushrooming academic literature on the Belt and Road Initiative, this ambitious book stands out as it achieves something remarkable: it offers a truly original perspective on its sources, mechanisms and implications. Embedding a meticulously systematic and analytically rigorous assessment of BRI in the critically important debates and scholarship in the discipline of international relations, Jeremy Garlick provides intellectually impressive and as comprehensive as possible evaluation of what is certainly one of the great puzzles of global politics today. This book is an important contribution to the understanding of Chinas foreign policy and Chinas evolving relationship with the world.
Dragan Pavlievi, Department of China Studies, Xian Jiaotong Liverpool University
Jeremy Garlicks book offers a unique theoretical understanding of the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative. The complex eclectic framework serves as a vehicle for deeper discussions on Xi Jinpings proposal. The book uses three types of theoretical understanding: Tang Shiping with the social evolution paradigm, through Robert Cox with neo-Gramscianism, and Jonathan Holstags offensive mercantilism. Thus, the book explains the Chinese proposal from very different perspectives. Going into more detailed scope of understanding Jeremy Garlick presents an eclectic approach of combination of almost all IR schools and discusses BRI from very different angles. The presented approach is very Chinese in the sense that the Chinese culture is all about finding middle ground, based on everlasting processes and not-fixed principles, being always flexible. And, in fact, this understanding also refers to the Chinese theory of Chinese (ethical) knowledge as the foundation, Western knowledge (and technology) for practical application of zhong wei ti, xi wei yong (). This in fact shows the Chinese flexible and pragmatic approaches, as does the book. The complex eclectic framework shows that BRI is a multidimensional, multilevel and multidirectional proposal that serves Chinas global aspirations and Xi Jinpings desire for Chinas future role in the world. Going beyond the eclectic framework, the book presents a necessary theoretical toolbox from which each of us can take the most suitable approach towards understanding the Belt and Road Initiative.
Dominik Mierzejewski, Associate Professor, Department of Asian Studies, Faculty of International and Political Studies, Chair at Center for Asian Affairs (university-based think-tank), University of Lodz, Poland
Garlick provides a deep and refined understanding of Chinas Belt and Road Initiative that is often over-simplified by media pundits as well as the mainstream IR theorists. He shows the complexity of Chinas rise and the fluidity of its theoretical implications. He makes the case that eclecticism and interdisciplinarity is the future of IR studies.
Jessica C. Liao, Assistant Professor of Political Science, North Carolina State University
This book provides a stimulating discussion on the relationship between two complex and difficult subjects: international relations theory and Chinas Belt and Road Initiative. The book challenges conventional thinking on these subjects and deserves to be read by both scholars of international relations and of Chinas changing role in the world.
Duncan Freeman, Research Fellow, College of Europe, EU-China Research Centre, Department of EU International Relations and Diplomacy Studies
The Impact of Chinas Belt and Road Initiative
This book merges macro- and micro-level analysis of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) to dissect Chinas aim in creating an integrated Eurasian continent through this single mega-project.
BRI has been the source of much interest and confusion, as established frameworks of analysis seek to understand Chinas intentions behind the policy. Chinas international activity in the early 21st century has not yet been successfully theorised by IR scholars because of a failure to satisfactorily encompass its complexity. In addition, the mix-and-match syncretism of the Chinese approach to foreign policy has been under-emphasised or omitted in many analyses. Bringing together complexity thinking and analytic eclecticism to assess the degree to which this scheme can transform international relations, Garlick critically examines this large-scale interconnectivity project and its potential impacts.
The book will be of interest to scholars and practitioners in the field of international relations and China studies including academics, policy-makers and diplomats around the world.
Jeremy Garlick is an Assistant Professor at the Jan Masaryk Institute of International Studies, University of Economics in Prague, specialising in Chinas international relations. He lived in China between 2008 and 2010, and again between 2013 and 2015, working at the University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing. He also lived in South Korea for five years, teaching at several universities and institutes. He first arrived in the Czech Republic in 1994, where he taught at Masaryk University of Brno for three years, and speaks fluent Czech. In 2014 he obtained his Ph.D. in Political Science from Palack University in Olomouc, Czech Republic. He has published papers in peer-reviewed impact journals and more than a hundred articles in major English-language newspapers in China, the UK and South Korea.
Rethinking Asia and International Relations
Series Editor: Emilian Kavalski, Li Dak Sum Chair Professor in China-Eurasia Relations and International Studies, University of Nottingham, Ningbo, China
This series seeks to provide thoughtful consideration both of the growing prominence of Asian actors on the global stage and the changes in the study and practice of world affairs that they provoke. It intends to offer a comprehensive parallel assessment of the full spectrum of Asian states, organisations, and regions and their impact on the dynamics of global politics.
The series seeks to encourage conversation on:
- what rules, norms, and strategic cultures are likely to dominate international life in the Asian Century;
- how will global problems be reframed and addressed by a rising Asia;
- which institutions, actors, and states are likely to provide leadership during such shifts to the East;
- whether there is something distinctly Asian about the emerging patterns of global politics.
