Opinion Piece on China’s Belt Road Initiative

Authors

  • William Huang

Abstract

“What the Chinese Communist Party has been doing to undermine democracy and intervene in foreign states is simply the party's way of interacting with the world,”1 said Peter Mattis, a research fellow in China Studies at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation in the United States. Since the era of Mao, Mainland China has sought to challenge what it believed to be the illegitimate international order led by the West. But during the 1950s, China was still an infant marxist-leninist state that lacked the resources to do so. It was not until China experienced tenfold GDP growth from 1978 as a result of trillion-dollar injections from foreign investment, that it began its campaign to compete against the liberal democracies around the world. In the efforts of establishing prominent influence by undermining the state of democracy, China pushed for the One Belt, One Road, or Belt Road Initiative (BRI) as a neo-colonialistic model that grants monetary support to economically deprived nations for political influence in return.

Author Biography

William Huang

William Huang is completing his second year achieving senior class standing in the pursuit of a triple major in Finance, Marketing, Management, and a minor in Political Science in the Honors College at Rutgers University-Camden. With work experiences in East Asia, Europe, and North America, William aims to forge a global career path that reflects a combination of interests in finance and international affairs. At his university, William served as the President of the Political Science Society, the Secretary of the Economics Society, the General Assemblies Officer of the Student Finance Association, and the Rutgers Ambassador of the Office of International Students and Global Programs. At the University of Pennsylvania, William is a research intern doing policy research for the coordination and report organizations for scholarly summits on international and domestic affairs. In this opinion piece on the Belt and Road Initiative, William hopes to promote awareness and encourage discourse on international issues of significant impact.

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Published

2022-09-21

How to Cite

Huang, W. (2022). Opinion Piece on China’s Belt Road Initiative. The Rutgers-Camden Undergraduate Review, 1(1). Retrieved from https://rcur.libraries.rutgers.edu/index.php/rcur/article/view/2113

Issue

Vol. 1 No. 1 (2020): The Undergraduate Review - Spring 2020

Section

Articles