CORRIDORS OF INFLUENCE: THE BELT AND ROAD INITIATIVE AND THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF EURASIAN ORDER

This article examines how China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) reshaped Eurasian international order between 2013 and 2025. Combining International Relations and International Political Economy, it applies a qualitative case-study design to China’s engagement with Central Asia, BRI–EAEU coordination, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, the China–Central Asia mechanism, and trans-Eurasian transport corridors. International order is assessed across three dimensions: power, institutional rules, and political norms. The findings show that the BRI strengthened China’s geo-economic centrality through trade, development finance, and infrastructure, while producing institutional layering rather than replacing Russian-led or multilateral arrangements. Normative convergence around sovereignty, non-interference, development, and multipolarity remained selective and was shaped by Central Asian governments’ interests. The article argues that the emerging configuration is a hybrid Eurasian order: increasingly China-centred economically, institutionally plural, and strategically contested. It demonstrates that order can evolve incrementally through state-directed capital and connectivity without hegemonic war or wholesale replacement of existing institutions.