“一带一路”浪潮的生成——基于空间模型的分析

Explaining the Wave of Foreign Participation in the Belt and Road Initiative:Evidence from Spatial Analysis

自2013年"一带一路"倡议提出以来,已有140个国家与中国签署了"一带一路"合作文件,这本身是一个令人瞩目的世界政治现象。然而,学界尚未结合经验证据系统性地理解"一带一路"倡议在全球扩散的过程和规律。作者从结构层面来理解"一带一路"的全球扩散,将其在国际社会的接纳过程理论化为"浪潮"——众多国家采纳相同政策的集群——的生成过程。在区分浪潮的触发机制和推进机制两个维度的差异后,作者将共建"一带一路"视为一种纵向能动型浪潮。作为"一带一路"的发起者和倡导者,中国的纵向力量对这一浪潮的触发具有关键影响;浪潮的推进时机取决于参与国的能动性,它们的积极态度和选择对于"一带一路"的全球扩散不可或缺。在推断浪潮属性及其可观察影响的基础上,作者构建了一个涵盖192个国家在2014—2019年是否参与"一带一路"倡议的原始数据集,并借助一系列空间模型实证检验影响各国参与的具体因素。统计结果表明,各国加入"一带一路"的选择在时间和空间上呈现明显的集聚特征,邻国是否加入和中国的政策规划等因素对一国加入"一带一路"的决定有显著影响;相比之下,一国与中国双边关系中的变量没有显著地影响该国的政策选择。这一研究在理论和实证层面深化了关于"一带一路"倡议全球扩散的总体理解,对进一步推进"一带一路"具有一定的现实意义。

Since 2013,when China’s Belt and Road Initiative(BRI)was unveiled,140 states have signed cooperation documents with China,constituting an eye-catching phenomenon in world politics.Yet,few studies have empirically and systematically investigated BRI’s global diffusion.This article studies the phenomenon from a structural vantage point.It conceptualizes foreign participation in BRI as a"wave"formation-the clustering of similar policy choices made by different states.Typologizing waves according to mechanisms of trigger and advance,this article regards foreign participation in the BRI as forming a vertical,agential wave.As the initiator and chief advocate of BRI,China’s vertical influence is key to triggering the wave.The timing of the wave’s advancement is contingent on the agency of other participating states-their positive attitudes and decisions are essential to the BRI’s global diffusion.After inferring the BRI wave’s key features and observable implications,this article constructs an original dataset of whether 192 states join the BRI from 2014 to 2019,and carries out a series of spatial analyses of factors affecting a state’s choice.The results show that the global records of participation in the BRI are featured by temporal and spatial clustering.Both a state’s neighboring states’decisions and China’s policies regarding the BRI are significantly associated with one’s decision to join the BRI.By contrast,variables related to a state’s bilateral relations with China are not statistically significant.This article contributes,both theoretically and empirically,to our overall understanding of the BRI’s global diffusion,with important implications for its future development.