Redai dili (Jun 2023)
Geopolitical Risk Assessment and Influencing Factors of Countries Participating in the Belt and Road Initiative
Abstract
The Belt and Road Initiative aims to achieve common development and prosperity for all countries. Building a scientific and reasonable geopolitical risk assessment system is an important prerequisite for participating countries to prevent and resolve geopolitical risk. Taking 64 countries in the six economic corridors of the Belt and Road Initiative as the assessment object, this study builds a geopolitical risk assessment system based on post-transaction costs. It analyzes the geopolitical risk level, spatial and temporal distribution characteristics, and influencing factors using the full array polygon graphical indicator method, Global Moran's I, and the spatial Durbin model. The research results show that: 1) From the time dimension, the geopolitical risks of participating countries show a trend of first rising and then falling, reaching a peak in 2015. 2) From the perspective of spatial distribution, high-risk areas are mainly concentrated in the Middle East and South Asia, while medium to high risk areas are concentrated in Indochina and the Arabian Peninsula. Most of the low to medium risk countries are Western Pacific island countries, while low-risk countries are mainly in Central Europe. The clustering characteristics of geopolitical risks are obvious. The results of Global Moran's I show that from 2011-2020, the geopolitical risk concentration area was initially located in the Middle East and South Asia, and then in 2015, Europe and East Asia also experienced high geopolitical risks. By 2020, it was still mainly concentrated in the Middle East and Eastern Europe, however, generally, the regions with high geopolitical risk will still be mainly concentrated in the Middle East and Eastern Europe. 3) The research results on the factors influencing geopolitical risks indicate that political stability, economic freedom, economic growth, increased education expenditure, and better natural resources have a significant inhibitory effect on geopolitical risk, while increases in the unemployment rate, population size, and oil resources, will to some extent, promote the generation of geopolitical risks. The indirect effect results show that political stability, economic freedom, and the unemployment rate of the host country have a significant impact on surrounding countries. Based on this, we believe that countries participating in the Belt and Road Initiative need to improve their government governance capabilities, accelerate their modernization transformation, effectively utilize the resources, funds, and technologies brought about by the Belt and Road Initiative. Furthermore, actively integrate into the regional economic cooperation framework of the Belt and Road Initiative and improve their ability to manage geopolitical risks. This study enriched the evaluation system of geopolitical risks. During the construction of the evaluation indicators, the results emphasized the sudden and violent characteristics of geopolitical risks, further explained the violent confrontation and economic game existing in geopolitical risks, and effectively enriched the literature on the spatial characteristics and influencing factors of geopolitical risks of countries participating in the Belt and Road Initiative. It should be pointed out that there are still some limitations in this study. This study is based on countries participating in the Belt and Road Initiative and there are deficiencies in the discussion of geopolitical risk for countries not in the region. Future research can be based on a global perspective, further enriching the evaluation index system of geopolitical risk, and conducting more in-depth research on the spatial transmission path and geopolitical risk avoidance measures.
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