“Digital Silk Road” as a Slogan Instead of a Grand Strategy

The rise of the Digital Silk Road has significantly shifted focus China’s Belt and Initiative. This change in emphasis produced sizeable political academic analyses, considering that is Beijing’s coherent top-down geopolitical—if not grand—strategy. article challenges this view. By adopting a slogan politics approach, argues can be better understood as vague slogan. Far from sophisticated top-level design, was result economic struggles among domestic actors shifting socio-political landscape. also shows Chinese have (un)consciously interpreted their preferred ways to advance own agenda. Beyond nationwide support echo slogan, there neither understanding nor nationally concerted effort singular geopolitical objective, if any. Consequently, company-level interests agendas, rather than masterplan, dominated development Road.