Status Quo or Revisionist? Theoretical and Empirical Analysis of the Role of the BRI in the Global Order

Many scholars think the world is at a crossroad where China will recast the new global order to represents the interests of the South. The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), covering sub-regions in Asia, Europe and Africa, is a flagship version proposed from China. What's the role of the BRI in the global order? The main point of this paper is that when implementing the BRI China plays mixed roles in the world stage as rule taker, rule reformer, rule breaker and rule innovator through multi-approaches of status quo, nested enhancement, regime shifting, comparative regime creating and parallel supplement. This paper theorizes five approaches to the global order and takes discourse and event data source to testify my assumption. The contribution is both theoretical and practical. This paper hopes to improve the theory of the approaches to the global order, to understand the implications of the BRI and to explore the role of China in the practical case of the BRI.