“New Silk Roads” in the Service of a “Great Power”? The Influence of Xi Jinping’s Operational Code in the Strategic Orientations of the People’s Republic of China

“The New Silk Roads” (NSR) are the new economic weapon of the Chinese government for increasing its security. As China’s President Xi Jinping claims that his country has reached the status of “great power”, it seems only logical according to defensive realism (Waltz Kenneth N., Theory of international politics. McGraw-Hill, New York, 1979) that the country wants to reform relations with the United States due to the new balance of power. However, how can we explain the Chinese strategic orientations and its NSR project by only taking into consideration the security variable? This chapter argues that Chinese security policy can only be correctly understood by taking a materialist constructivism (Lindemann Thomas, Sociologie constructiviste des crises internationales. L'Harmattan, Paris, 2010) point of view, which highlights the role of images, emotions, and identities. In order to show that these factors are important for analysing the NSR we will use Alexander George’s “operational code” (George Alexander L., International Studies Quarterly 13:190-222, 1969). It will help us trace Xi Jinping’s instrumental beliefs, and in particular the place of the NSR project in Chinese foreign policy. It will enable us to trace Xi’s philosophical beliefs about the opposition between internal and external relations, his self-images, and his vision of the future international order.