BRI- En idé om en ny värld som materialiseras genom infrastruktur? En kritisk diskursanalys om hur BRI:s nyckeldokument utmanar idéer och normer inom den globala styrningen Katarina Hedencrona

Abstract

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is a Chinese infrastructure project, initiated in 2013, with a plan to be finished in 2049. The project has received a great amount of media attention and has been scrutinized carefully due to suspicion towards China’s intentions. Research wise, BRI has been popular and a common area of research lies within the geopolitical sphere, however, this study aimed exploring how global governance can be challenged by the project, and mainly in terms of ideas and norms, adding to the ideational research about BRI. Hence, the purpose of this study is to analyse China’s narrative generated by the BRI project by answering the question formulation: “How does the BRI potentially challenge ideas and norms on global governance? ” This is executed by a critical discourse analysis of the key documents officially published by the Chinese state about BRI, which included a systematic approach in finding themes. The results were analyzed with a theoretical framework with a ground in social constructivism. Lastly, the results demonstrated four themes in which China as the founder and leader of BRI, aimed at challenging the current norms and ideas about global governance. These four themes are: the integration discourse, BRI is a project by China but created for the world, the justice discourse, and that BRI is here to stay. Hence, all four different themes added to China’s narrative, and specifically by challenging the idées and norms within global governance. In the conclusion, both critique towards the study was given such as my impact on the study as well as recommendations for future research which were to investigate other actors' narratives about BRI.