This book attempts to answer the most fundamental questions of BRI by applying economic methods: What is, what to do, and how to do. Whether in China or the international community, whether in academia or in decision-making circles, there is no consensus on these issues, even though BRI has been around for eight years. As a result, there are many misunderstandings and suspicions about BRI, which have become a major obstacle to its smooth development. As an academic study, this book is not a simple interpretation of the official Chinese BRI representation, but an analysis of it is based on a unified theoretical framework. In addition to tracing the evolution of BRI and the cognition of the international community, the focus of this book is to analyze the attributes, positioning, and governance structure of BRI, as well as to discuss the internal and external risks it faces and its future development direction. The author starts from the development orientation of BRI (different from the current rule orientation of global governance) and makes a normative definition of it. Emphasizing development orientation does not mean that BRI does not need rules, but to jointly formulate rules according to the needs of development. Therefore, one of the directions to promote the high-quality development of BRI is institutionalization.

Xiangyang Li is CASS member，former director-general of National Institute of International Strategy (NIIS) in CASS. He is president of Chinese Society of Chinese Society of Asia-Pacific and deputy president of Chinese Society of American Economy. He received BA in Economics from Central University of Finance and Economics, and his MA and Ph.D. in Economics from Graduate School of CASS in 1983, 1988, 1998 respectively. Li’s scholarly interests cover international economics and China’s foreign strategy.