Narration, Cooperation, and Confrontation

Abstract

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is promoted by the People’s Republic of China as a global development and connectivity platform. Despite being one of the world’s largest investment programs, international perceptions of the BRI vary. Germany and the UK are two Western democracies that, despite their longstanding diplomatic histories with Beijing and strong bilateral trade relations, have not signed a national partnership agreement in the form of a Memorandum of Understanding. Therefore, these two countries provide formidable research cases for comparing their perceptions of the BRI, particularly regarding security concerns related to the project. For this purpose, the thesis investigates the extent to which the BRI is considered a security issue in Germany and the UK. It presents a novel approach for categorizing securitization by combining discourse and qualitative content analysis, enabling systematic international comparison of the securitization of the BRI.