Inter-civilisational Engagement through the Belt and Road Initiative: Dialectical and Empirical Studies on BRI Philosophy and its Pragmatic Implementation

The postwar period witnessed a rise of neoliberal international financial and trading institutions, namely, the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and World Trade Organisation. However, the problematic philosophical pivots behind those neoliberal international institutions put the interests of major developing economic powers at a more disadvantageous position and exacerbate the undesirable prospects of the divides between the poorest parts of the world and the richest parts of the globe with little expansive social responsibility. With the rise of China as a largest developing economic power, the failure of those neoliberal institutions in addressing those underlying problems facilitates many emerging economic powers and civilisational entities to count on China for taking more social responsibility at an international level. Under this circumstance, the philosophical conceptions behind the Belt & Road Initiative and pragmatic implementation of the substances behind the Initiative on one side galvanise and strategise the sustainable development of Chinese economy, infrastructure and employment——a kind of extension and safeguard of raison d’état of China in a global environment of uncertainty, and on the other side functions as a newly-established magnificent counterforce to, the monopolistic, monolithic neoliberal international financial and trading architectures. Through dialectics and empirical studies on multiple cases and data analysis of overseas investment projects around the Belt and Road Initiative at a global axis, this paper seeks to at a global level undertake theoretical extrapolations on the philosophical conceptions and ideational substance behind the Belt and Road Initiative and provides empirical and interpretative assessments of philosophical disparities and yet institutional co-opetition (cooperation and competition) and reciprocity between the neoliberal financial and trading institutions and the Belt and Road Initiative in the 21st century of reorganisations and restructuring of international order—a multipolarity-oriented century that is far more unpredictable and partner-intertwining than the 20th century of the realist-hierarchical bipolarity. It has been observed that the phenomenal Chinese economic sustainability index inadvertently unfolds a newly-focused representative, inclusive initiative, especially including the Belt & Road Initiative, across the Asia-Pacific region, the European continent and elsewhere, which is not encapsulating macroeconomic opportunity, and instead unleashing a continuation of multidimensional, inter-civilisational engagements for maximum trans-continental macroeconomic reciprocity instead of zero-sum mentality. This paper tends to draw temporary conclusions that the BRI philosophy of more representation, inclusion, and grand course of growing international responsibility provides different strategic pivots and architectures with those of the neoliberal international institutions which did not raise certain targeted philosophical questions of dysfunctionality of unilateral neoliberal structural adjustments and falsifiability of exclusive voting share. Thus, the feasibility and outcomes of implementation of the philosophical conceptions and ideational and institutional substances around the Belt and Road Initiative in international development can generate more deliverable considerable outcomes for a handful of economic stakeholders and civilisational entities for a long period and years to come