FRAGMENTED MOTIVES AND POLICIES: THE BELT AND ROAD INITIATIVE IN CHINA

Observers have portrayed the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) variously, as China's great-power strategy, global infrastructure initiative, or commercial projects. Each characterization has had logical reasoning and evidence to support it. But how? How has one initiative been shown to have such varied motives? This article unpacks the Chinese state and establishes that a “tri-block” structure consisting of political leadership, bureaucracy, and economic arms has accounted for such varied motivations and actors in the BRI in China. In the BRI process, the leadership employed strategic rhetoric, and bureaucracies imposed policy ideas. Yet, more pervasively, the implementers have followed commercial motives in specific projects. BRI's strategic rhetoric and hazardous investment have generated external critiques and anti-China backlash, forcing Beijing to readjust the initiative. However, given the tri-block state structure, Beijing's policy adjustment will not be sufficient. Economic actors’ incentives need to be shifted too.

The 'Reactive State' as Foreign Aid Giver: A Historical Analysis of the Aid Policy Regime (1953-1999) in South Korea

Why are donor goverments eager to increase foreign aid and how do they justify aid increase? This essay present a historical insight into the bilateral donors' rhetoric behind aid expansion. south korea provides one critical case. Not with standing its imperssive aid growth over the last decade, the country has constantly failed to meet its annual commitment by a significant margin. This article argues that such policy behaviour might stem from its legacy as a 'reactive state.' During the cold War, the country's nascent aid policy regime produced expansionary but non-strategic rhetoric, due to its fragmented structure and lack of indigenenous policy rationales. such traits of the policy regime linger today, thereby continuously favouring overstimated aid targets ana outwardlooking aid initiatives.

The Whiteness of Silence: A Critical Autoethnographic Tale of a Strategic Rhetoric

Nakayama and Krizeck’s essay, “A Strategic Rhetoric of Whiteness” offers an understanding of Whiteness as cultural praxis operating beyond the narrow understanding of mere skin color. While scholars have added valuable contributions to the study of Whiteness, the discussion of the “strategic rhetoric” still lacks examples of embodiment. This essay seeks to demonstrate the deployment of Whiteness by describing a specific moment in which I was complicit in the deployment of Whiteness using the strategy of silence. This essay enumerates the machinations of Whiteness hidden in a seemingly mundane performance and contributes to an ongoing conversation about problematizing Whiteness.