The Silk Road Spirit: China’s BRI discourse and its pursuit for great power status

Abstract Current interpretations making sense of China's policy rationale for pursuing the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) often highlight explanations rooted in the logic of economic statecraft. This article proposes a different perspective by looking at the BRI as part of China's longstanding agenda to construct and present a positive and distinct major power image for itself. This perspective is consistent with the assumptions of Social Identity Theory (SIT), where groups pursue positive identity through the sociocognitive processes of categorization and self‐enhancement. By identifying referential and predication discursive strategies as reflected in official texts, this article finds representations of both categorization and self‐enhancement at work through China's Silk Road Spirit discourse of the BRI. Through this discourse, China seeks to cultivate a positive and distinct identity for itself by distinguishing its in‐group and out‐group and by forwarding positive values in terms of how international relations ought to be conducted.