China’s networked order

Salát, Gergely (2026) China’s networked order. FRONTIERS IN POLITICAL SCIENCE (8). no.-1914439. ISSN 2673-3145

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Abstract

This article reconstructs the structural logic of China’s emerging vision of international order as expressed in its Four Global Initiatives on development, security, civilization, and governance, announced between 2021 and 2025. Rather than measuring the success of these initiatives or judging their normative content, the study asks what kind of order-building design they express when read together. Drawing interpretively on the science of networks, it argues that Beijing’s initiatives are best understood as the programmatic outline of a centralized, hub-and-spoke architecture in which China positions itself as the connecting node linking many partners that are not strongly tied to one another. The network vocabulary is used as a qualitative, heuristic lens, not as a mathematical claim: the article does not compute network statistics but uses network concepts to organize and interpret official documents. The framework is developed through a structural reading of founding speeches, concept papers, and progress reports, and is illustrated with regional cases including the Belt and Road Initiative, China–Africa cooperation, China–Central and Eastern Europe cooperation, and the more polycentric Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and BRICS. The article situates this reading alongside established accounts of asymmetric interdependence and contested multilateralism, and shows what a network-structural perspective adds. It concludes by specifying the interpretive limits of the approach and an agenda for future, more formal analysis.

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