Constructing Identities, Countering Identities & Questioning Anarchy - How China’s Belt and Road calls for new understandings in conventional IR

Abstract

This thesis is a constructivist qualitative case study of China’s ambitious and world-spanning Belt and Road Initiative as an identity building exercise, and it reviews and criticizes popular approaches to the rise of China offered by China threat theory, offensive realism, and classical realism, but also the perspective of power transition theory. It is a theoretical exercise that offers a constructivist alternative to the problematic Western centric bias and over-emphasis on anarchy and materialism provided by offensive and classical realism, and it systematically investigates the potential significance of identity to the rise of great power China. It theoretically models three processes of identity building based on the literature review and applies the model to the document analysis which results in the indication of a fourth complementary process of identity building. This constructivist approach also questions and expands the traditional understanding within IR of a great power and anarchy. This thesis offers an alternative approach to the rise of China not yet offered in the field of IR.