COVID-19, the Belt and Road Initiative, Tianxia/The Chinese Universe, and Universal Human Rights

ABSTRACT

This chapter discusses how the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) developed from an internally driven geopolitical undertaking to tackle the bottleneck in China's domestic economic development and regional security into a more ideological and global phenomenon. During the 2018 trade war with the United States, the Chinese started to redefine democracy, human rights, and a global political system with terms such as Tianxia/All-Under-Heaven and a Community with a Shared Future for Humankind. The chapter focuses on the impact that COVID-19 has had on the BRI and how the latter has adjusted to the pandemic since early 2020. The BRI, so one suggestion is, should be viewed as a dynamically emerging series of projects that can be shaped and directed to outcomes that benefit global security and prosperity. © Oxford University Press 2022.