Abstract:

There is an increasing international consensus that the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) affords a platform for increasingly more countries to explore new international economic governance mechanisms and new development paths. In the meantime, neoliberal globalization has arrived at a crossroads, while anti-globalization voices are louder and practices more frequent since the 2008 global financial crisis, challenging the future of globalization at the scale of the world as a whole. Against this background, political elites and scholars increasingly see the BRI as a possible alternative and new globalization path and, in particular, as a path towards inclusive globalization. Based on a brief review of the process and mechanisms of global economic expansion, and a critique of neoliberal globalization, this article tries to use the vision and actions proposed by the BRI to develop the concept of inclusive globalization. The article suggests that inclusive globalization involves at least the following dimensions: a better and more powerful role of state as a mediator to ensure social justice and stability; correcting the duration mismatch in financial markets and provision of more patient capital to finance infrastructure development, productive activities, and real services in economically less-developed countries and regions; encouraging countries to choose and experiment with development paths that best fit their national conditions and values; enabling all stakeholders to participate equally in globalization; and protecting cultural diversity while promoting economic globalization. Although these dimensions are not sufficient to delineate in detail inclusive globalization, they at least point to several directions for future research on the topic and may offer some support for discursive construction of the BRI.

Key words: the Belt and Road Initiative, globalization, neoliberalism, inclusive globalization, China