Transformation of the Belt and Road Initiative at the Present Stage (2021-2023)

The current research explores the development of Belt and Road Initiative of China from 2021 to 2023 and the factors that have influenced the changing development of the BRI. The Belt and Road project regularly faces new challenges, such as the coronavirus, the increasing number of regional conflicts, pressure from the US and EU, anti-dumping investigations and the rapidly changing international environment. Important events in 2023 were the third forum of the Belt and Road project, where the lowest number of participating countries of the BRI were represented, and the withdrawal of Italy, which joined the initiative in 2019, from the project. The aim of the thesis is to examine the current status of the Belt and Road initiative and analyse the reasons that influenced the decline in the development of the project. During the research it was necessary to analyse the reasons for initiating the PPI, to examine the concept, objectives and principles of the Belt and Road project; to identify the infrastructure projects that have been built under the BRI; to trace the dynamics of changes in China's trade turnover with the participants and changes in the volume of Chinese investment in the BRI and highlight the main problems and challenges in China's implementation of the Belt and Road project. The current research that describe the concept of the BRI, its goals and principles, explore the relations between China and ASEAN, the EU, Latin America, Africa, Southeast Asia, and their trade turnover within the framework of the Belt and Road project were studied. In order to achieve the objectives, a cause-and-effect analysis was chosen to identify the problems and challenges in the implementation of the Belt and Road project from the global community, individual countries and, as a result, to make sure that China and the participating countries pay less attention to the development of the initiative. The comparative method allows to compare China's trade turnover with its main trading partners and to highlight the decrease in imports from the countries participating in the project, as well as to compare the representation of countries in the three forums of the BRI in order to analyse the interest of states in their participation. The historical-genetic method helped to study the changes in the development of the BRI and the construction of infrastructure facilities. The main findings of the study showed that the development of the Belt and Road project has declined in the current stage. It is argued that there is a crisis in the BRI from 2019 onwards due to the declining Chinese investment in the project, the increasing trade imbalance in China's trade turnover with ASEAN, EU and African countries. In addition, the research found that China has implemented several infrastructure projects in different parts of the world at the current stage, but their number and scale of construction have been reduced compared to the heyday of the Belt and Road Initiative. Moreover, there is growing discontent among the populations of some countries about their participation in the Chinese initiative. Country leaders are unhappy with the growing debt to China and the stoppage of infrastructure construction. Keywords: the Belt and Road project, the initiative, the BRI, China, transport infrastructure, trade turnover, investment, ASEAN, EU, USA