Abstract
The geostrategic approach refers to China's method to rise as global power through worldwide trade expansion and the development of its military and naval capabilities. It creates clusters of countries interlinked as China's trade partners, thus being assets to its global ascent. China's importance in global trade is a function of its partners' behavior embracing its trade mechanism. The edges connecting nodes are multidirectional, implying that countries are as much interested in their China-induced interlinkages as they are in their partnership with China. This results in China's centrality, a quality gained from being dominant in trade partnerships in terms of numbers and significance. This chapter examines the approach, process, and historical, geographic, and behavioral components that China uses in its ascent as central node in the international trade network. It explores how underlying dimensions making China's national character conjointly devise its behavior in global trade.
TopLiterature Review
This literature review deals first with the importance of geography. Afterwards, scholarship on geostrategy and geopolitics is presented, particularly in their application in policy making.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Belt and Road Initiative: Economic and trade development initiative launched by China in 2013 involving several countries in trade partnerships connected through infrastructure transports.
Geoeconomic: Characteristics of economic activities as they relate to the spatial, temporal, and political aspects.
Node: In network analysis, a point at which lines or pathways intersect or branch in a network or diagram.
Continentalism: An expansionist approach used by China to include countries of Eurasian landmass in its sphere of trade.
EDGE: An edge is a line drawn to connect two vertices and they constitute a set of two elements characterized by the connecting points.
Geography: Physical location of a country as it determines its political, economic, and trade development through its dealing with other countries in the world.
Economic Corridors: Partnerships of countries connected through dynamic interactions aimed at creating patterns of regional economic development.
Connectivity: Method for establishing lifeline linkages between economic corridors and to the outside world in order to achieve transport network completeness.
Eurasia: Continental landmass comprising Asia and Europe, which China, through its geostrategic approach to trade, has expanded to include Africa for the purpose of its trade expansion.
Geopolitics: Geopolitics is mostly used in international relations as the study of the influence of geographic factors on politics, both domestic and international.