Aligning authoritarian regionalism: discourses and strategies in the EAEU and BRI

This article analyzes the strategic convergence of Russia’s Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) and China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) as manifestations of authoritarian regionalism. Drawing on Obydenkova and Libman’s framework and insights from new regionalism theory, the study examines how these initiatives serve as instruments of geopolitical repositioning and normative resistance to Western liberalism. A comparative discourse analysis of official speeches by Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping reveals overlapping narratives emphasizing sovereignty, multipolarity, development, and civilizational revival. While Russia highlights strategic autonomy, China promotes connectivity and peace, yet both frame regionalism as a post-Western alternative. The study argues that authoritarian regionalism is not merely regime-protective but actively shapes international norms and regional orders. Limitations include the exclusive focus on elite-level rhetoric and the absence of grassroots or institutional performance analysis. The findings contribute to a broader understanding of non-liberal regionalism in the context of a shifting, multipolar global order.

1 Introduction

The rise of regional integration initiatives led by authoritarian states marks a fundamental reconfiguration of the global order, challenging the liberal premises of governance, cooperation, and legitimacy. Russia’s Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) and China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) exemplify this shift: both projects function not merely as institutional platforms but as discursive and political arenas through which authoritarian regimes articulate, justify, and project alternative visions of regional and global order. Although differing in structure—the EAEU as a formal regional organization and the BRI as a flexible network of partnerships—each constructs regionalism as a strategic response to post–Cold War geopolitical change, foregrounding themes of sovereignty, multipolarity, civilizational identity, and resistance to Western hegemony. This study approaches these initiatives through the lens of authoritarian regionalism, understood as a mode of regional cooperation in which authoritarian regimes design and lead regional frameworks to consolidate political control, enhance regime security, and shape normative environments in their favor.

Authoritarian regionalism is understood here as a mode of regional cooperation in which authoritarian regimes design and lead regional frameworks to consolidate political control, extend influence, and stabilize regime legitimacy (Ambrosio, 2008; Libman and Obydenkova, 2018). The EAEU, launched in 2015 under Russian leadership, functions as both a regulatory and symbolic project to institutionalize Moscow’s role as the center of post-Soviet integration. It’s guiding geopolitical narrative—“Greater Eurasia”—frames the Union not merely as an economic bloc, but as the nucleus of a broader civilizational space stretching from Europe to Asia. This concept reinterprets the Eurasian landmass as a geopolitical “continent of destiny,” intended to balance Western dominance through a multipolar order underpinned by Russian strategic leadership.

The BRI, announced in 2013, represents China’s transcontinental vision of connectivity through infrastructure, trade, and financial integration. Yet beyond its economic dimension, it is animated by the political narrative of a “Community of Shared Future for Mankind” (CSFM)—a concept that universalizes China’s developmental and governance model as an alternative to Western liberalism. This discursive construct positions China not as a revisionist challenger but as a benevolent architect of a more inclusive and “harmonious” order (Callahan, 2016). The parallel between “Greater Eurasia” and the “Community of Shared Future” illustrates how both regimes employ geopolitical imaginaries to legitimize their regional projects as civilizational enterprises, combining material integration with ideational influence.

Although institutionally distinct—the EAEU as a rule-based regional organization, the BRI as a diffuse network of bilateral and multilateral partnerships—both initiatives are informed by anti-hegemonic logics that resist the universalization of liberal norms. Each seeks to redefine sovereignty not as compliance with global governance but as self-determined development under state-led frameworks. In this sense, the EAEU and BRI exemplify how authoritarian governance models are externalized regionally through economic integration, connectivity, and normative diffusion. Their interaction also reveals a complex balance between convergence and autonomy: while Russia and China rhetorically endorse “synergy” between the EAEU and BRI, institutional alignment remains selective and strategically calculated, reflecting their asymmetrical capabilities and differing visions of Eurasia.

This study draws on insights from authoritarian regionalism (Obydenkova and Libman, 2019) and New Regionalism theory. New Regionalism, as articulated by Söderbaum and Shaw (2003) and Hettne (2003), rejects the static, state-centric focus of “old” regionalism and conceptualizes regions as socially constructed, multi-dimensional, and context-dependent. Regions are not merely geographic spaces but “processes in the making”—arenas where political, economic, and ideational forces converge. This perspective enables the analysis of the EAEU and BRI as discursive and institutional projects that simultaneously produce regional identities and contest global hierarchies. By integrating New Regionalism with constructivist IR theory and discursive institutionalism, the paper highlights how authoritarian states use regionalism not only as a policy instrument but also as a performative discourse through which they negotiate legitimacy, authority, and identity in a multipolar world.

Empirically, the study analyzes official speeches, summit declarations, and policy documents from 2013 to 2024 to trace recurring motifs such as multipolarity, sovereignty, connectivity, and civilizational revival. These elements are interpreted not as isolated rhetorical fragments but as discursive building blocks through which regional orders are framed and justified. The comparative design operates on two levels: first, it contrasts how the EAEU and BRI differ in institutional structure, governance logic, and narrative orientation; and second, it examines how these two projects converge discursively and strategically to advance shared non-liberal visions of regional and global order. Situating the EAEU–BRI nexus within broader debates on the liberal international order (LIO) further reveals the ambivalent nature of authoritarian regionalism—simultaneously dependent on existing global structures and oriented toward challenging and reshaping them.

In doing so, the paper contributes to two research agendas: (1) non-democratic regional organizations tend to attract non-democratic members, and (2) the predominance of authoritarian states in an RO often produces hierarchical structures that benefit the leading autocracy. This study extends these expectations by examining how power asymmetry becomes discursively constructed and reproduced, thereby shaping the meaning and purpose of regional cooperation. While Libman and Obydenkova emphasize institutional commitment and material dependence, the findings here suggest that discursive practices are equally important in sustaining the hierarchy they describe. Between 2013 and 2024, Russia maintained the EAEU’s appeal largely without resistance from other members, reinforcing the view that weaker states often lack viable alternatives and thus accept Russia’s agenda-setting power.

2 Conceptual framework

Authoritarian regionalism—an emerging concept in the study of regional organizations (ROs) developed by Obydenkova and Libman (2019, 2021)—provides an important analytical lens for understanding how non-democratic regimes design regional institutions to bolster regime security, reinforce elite authority, and resist liberal international norms. Yet, to capture the full ideational and political complexity of these processes, this framework must be expanded through the theoretical lens of new regionalism and the interpretive insights of constructivism. Together, these perspectives enable the analysis of authoritarian regional projects—such as the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) and the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)—as both strategic and discursive enterprises, where institutional design and political meaning are mutually constitutive.

New regionalism, as originally developed by Björn Hettne in the 1990s (Söderbaum, 2016, p. 51), emerged in response to the limitations of “old” regionalism, which treated regions as rational, market-driven spaces largely modeled on European integration (Hettne, 2003). Building on Karl Polanyi’s (1944) insights, Hettne contends that societal transformation is driven by the tension between expanding markets and political efforts to protect civil society. From this standpoint, the rise of new regionalism reflects a re-emergence of “the political”—namely, deliberate interventions to uphold essential values such as development, security, peace, and ecological sustainability (Hettne, 1999, p. 22; Neumann, 2003, p. 31). As scholarly interest in regional organizations (ROs) and international organizations (IOs) has grown, Söderbaum (2003, pp. 1–2) identifies three key dimensions that distinguish old from new regionalism: a temporal shift (from the post–World War II period up to the 1970s versus the 1980s onward), a spatial shift (from a narrow, Eurocentric focus to a more global and pluralistic one), and a global environmental shift (from an introverted, bipolar context to an extroverted, multipolar one) (see also Hettne, 2003, pp. 22–42).

The distinguishing features of the new regionalism approach are reflected in its multidimensional, complex, fluid, and non-conforming nature, as well as in its inclusion of diverse state and non-state actors who frequently collaborate through informal, multi-actor coalitions (Söderbaum and Shaw, 2003, pp. 1–2). This evolving character has, in turn, prompted a rethinking of the concepts of regionalism, regionalization, and regionness. Söderbaum (2003, p. 10) notes that the study of regionalism has long been dominated by a range of rationalist or problem-solving theories. Traditionally, neorealists emphasize national interests, security concerns, and power politics as the primary drivers of regional formation, whereas neoliberal institutionalists highlight the role of institutions and regional organizations in managing interdependence and facilitating the provision of collective goods at the regional level. Constructivists seek to challenge the core rationalist/problem-solving assumptions of neorealism and neoliberalism—such as the separation between subject and object, the distinction between facts and values, the state-centric ontology, and the reliance on rationalist epistemology (Söderbaum, 2004; Hettne, 1999, 2003). In other words, these debates reflect an ongoing effort to explain the rationale for regionalism within an evolving global context, yet regardless of how they are resolved, Neumann (2003) argues that regionalism is fundamentally a political project shaped by human actors within a specific spatial setting.

In discussions on the emergence of new regionalism, Libman and Obydenkova (2018) introduce the notion of authoritarian regionalism, which they define as “regional organizations founded and dominated by autocracies (or at least having an authoritarian core country).” They argue that this concept helps illuminate how the authoritarian character of member states shapes the operation and outcomes of the regional organizations they establish. The notion that regionalism may depart from its presumed democratic character—an idea already present in earlier theories of old regionalism—has been echoed by various scholars in different forms. These include discussions of illiberal regionalism or an illiberal turn in regionalism (Lewis, 2018; Scott, 2021; Makarychev and Yatsyk, 2018; Acharya, 2017), analyses of populist governments challenging the legitimacy of international institutions (Pacciardi et al., 2024), the economic context of non-democratic regionalism (Libman and Vinokurov, 2018), legal harmonization of authoritarian regionalism (Lemon and Antonov, 2020), illiberal solidarism within authoritarian regional institution (Buranelli, 2021), and studies of how authoritarian regimes consolidate power in the face of democratic pressures (Cottiero and Haggard, 2023; Debre, 2020, 2022; Kneuer et al., 2019).

These studies seek to theorize regional organizations created by non-democratic regimes or states, situating their analysis within the same temporal context—the post–Cold War, multipolar global order—while emphasizing region-building as a more voluntary, internally driven process, comprehensive, and multidimensional societal process, and highlighting a limited form of economic “openness” compatible with participation in an independent world economy. Hettne (2003) articulated this more explicitly by proposing the New Regionalism Approach (NRA), which she described as a broad and comprehensive framework. The NRA seeks to understand regionalism from both an endogenous perspective—where regionalization is shaped internally by a diverse range of actors—and an exogenous perspective, which views regionalization and globalization as intertwined, at times contradictory yet also complementary, expressions of global transformation.

A constructivist strand of regionalism research, following Neumann’s (2003) region-building approach, shifts the focus from the mechanisms driving regionalization to the narrative arenas in which regions are imagined, articulated, and contested, emphasizing that regionalism is formed and shaped through discourse as much as through material process. Spandler (2019) argues that regional integration is best understood as a discursive process in which actors use integration logics not as causal mechanisms but as framing devices to justify or contest particular institutional arrangements. Working within the institutionalist tradition—more precisely a discursive institutionalist—Elumbre (2014) seeks to categorize the constraining and enabling conditions of regionalization, using the ASEAN case to highlight both the substantive content of ideas and the interactive discursive processes that unfold within institutional contexts. This indicates that narrative has become a promising locus in the study of regional organizations, as it can reveal the motives for formation as well as the contextual constraints and enabling conditions of regionalization. Returning to Hettne’s (2003) interpretation—drawing on Polanyi—that regionalism constitutes a political response by a group of states within a region, this paper focuses its analysis on the public statements of leaders from authoritarian-leaning countries involved in the formation of regional organizations.

Drawing on the above review, this study examines the motives of authoritarian regimes in forming, sustaining, and promoting regionalism, the ways in which they navigate geopolitical constraints, and the ideals they project onto the regional orders they pursue. The analysis is situated within the conceptual framework of authoritarian regionalism (Libman and Obydenkova, 2018, 2019), which allows for the identification of rhetorical dimensions in the specific mechanisms of autocracy promotion, while recognizing that material factors also remain significant. Within this framework, we treat discourse as a medium through which regimes transmit their ideas and visions, allowing us to identify both explicit and implicit meanings regarding how they politically respond (Neumann, 2003) to shifts in the international geopolitical environment, particularly in the post–Cold War era. In other words, the construction of discourse is inseparable from its socio-political context—both synchronic and diachronic—which shapes how regimes interpret and react to geopolitical change.

3 Methodology

This study employs a qualitative, comparative case study design grounded in constructivist International Relations (IR) theory and operationalized through Krippendorff’s Qualitative Content Analysis (QCA). Constructivism assumes that international actors are shaped not solely by material interests but by intersubjective meanings and shared norms that define legitimate behavior (Wendt, 1999). Following Neumann’s (2003) region-building approach, this study treats regionalism as a discursive process in which regions are imagined, articulated, and contested within narrative arenas rather than generated solely by structural mechanisms. Accordingly, the research investigates how Russia and China construct regional order discursively through the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) and the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)—two institutional embodiments of authoritarian regionalism (Obydenkova and Libman, 2019; Söderbaum and Shaw, 2003). The comparative design enables identification of convergence and divergence in how both states linguistically encode sovereignty, cooperation, and legitimacy in their respective regional visions.

For the EAEU, discourse is situated alongside concrete institutional developments such as the functioning of the Eurasian Economic Commission, harmonization of customs regulations, tariff coordination, technical standards, and Russia’s geopolitical ambition to shape a post–Cold War multipolar order. For the BRI, discourse is analyzed in the context of large-scale infrastructure financing, transcontinental transport corridors, bilateral lending practices, state-owned enterprise involvement, and China’s evolving institutional tools such as the Silk Road Fund and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. These non-discursive elements provide the structural and material background against which official narratives are produced, circulated, and contested.

Following Krippendorff (2019), texts are treated as communicative events that encode institutional intentions and ideological commitments. The analysis integrates qualitative content and discourse approaches, combining frequency-based indicators of discursive salience with interpretive contextual reading to understand how language performs political work. The corpus consists of 22 speeches by Vladimir Putin (2013–2024) and 16 speeches by Xi Jinping, Prime Miniter Li Keqiang and Zhao Leji, and Vice Prime Minister Zhang Gaoli, across the Boao, BRI, and Global Initiative forums. These were selected through relevance sampling to capture elite-level articulations of regional and global order-making. The data were analyzed in ATLAS.ti using an abductive coding process that merged theoretical guidance with emergent discovery.

The unit of analysis was the sentence, the smallest syntactically complete segment expressing a discernible political meaning, while the paragraph functioned as the context unit to preserve semantic coherence. A codebook was developed and refined iteratively, including six core indicators—cooperation, harmony, infrastructure, innovation, peace, and sovereignty—each defined with inclusion/exclusion rules and example excerpts. For instance, “energy cooperation” was coded as economic cooperation, while “strategic cooperation” was classified as geopolitical. Polysemous terms were resolved by contextual priority rules, and interpretive decisions were documented through analytic memos to ensure transparency.

Reliability was established through compensatory validation procedures appropriate for single-researcher coding. Twenty percent of the dataset was re-coded after a two-week interval to test intra-coder stability, while a blind audit by an external qualitative researcher ensured interpretive consistency. A simulated inter-coder reliability test using binary co-occurrence comparison produced Krippendorff’s α = 0.81, meeting the standard threshold of reliability. Reflexive memoing throughout the process provided an audit trail that enhances reproducibility and interpretive dependability.

Frequency data were analyzed as indicators of discursive salience rather than conceptual weight. Higher frequencies of sovereignty, cooperation, and peace anchored the discursive architecture of both corpora, while contextual co-occurrences revealed divergent strategic orientations—China’s developmental multilateralism versus Russia’s civilizational sovereignty. Illustrative quotations were selected to exemplify these thematic contrasts and substantiate interpretive claims.

Situated within a constructivist epistemology, this methodology treats discourse as constitutive of political reality. By integrating Krippendorff’s systematic rigor with constructivist sensitivity to meaning, the study advances an empirically grounded yet interpretive framework for analyzing how authoritarian regionalism is linguistically produced, stabilized, and legitimized as an alternative model of global order.

4 The Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) after 10 years: integration, potentials, and geopolitical alignments

The Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) is an economic integration bloc comprising five post-Soviet states: Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, and Armenia. Established on January 1, 2015, the EAEU aims to foster economic cooperation and competitiveness among its members by creating a common market that facilitates the free movement of goods, services, labor, and capital across borders (Kirkham, 2016; Vinokurov, 2017). As of 2023, the EAEU encompasses approximately 183 million people and boasts a gross domestic product exceeding $2.4 trillion, accounting for about 2.3% of the global economy (Braun, 2025; Braun et al., 2024). The formation of the EAEU was partly a strategic response to the expanding influence of the European Union and various Western trade agreements. The union has implemented several foundational structures, including a common external customs tariff, a customs union, and a common labor market, to streamline economic interactions and enhance integration among member states (Kirkham, 2016; Pomerlyan and Belitski, 2024). However, the EAEU faces significant challenges, primarily due to Russia’s dominant role, the authoritarian nature of many member states’ political regimes, and the economic reliance on oil and gas exports (Braun, 2025; Gromilova and Braun, 2024). The EAEU’s objectives include reducing commodity prices through lower transportation costs, promoting healthy competition, and fostering stable economic development to elevate the living standards within the region (Eurasian Economic Commission, 2024; Vinokurov, 2017; Tarr, 2016). The EAEU also seeks to serve as a bridge for its members to connect with other global economic initiatives, such as China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), thereby enhancing regional economic dynamics and cooperation (Sahakyan and Zheng, 2024; Shakhanova and Garlick, 2020).

Despite its ambitious mandate, the EAEU faces significant institutional limitations. The Union lacks a strong supranational authority. While the Eurasian Economic Committee (EEC) is formally empowered to make binding decisions, in practice, member states retain substantial autonomy and often resist the delegation of power (Braun et al., 2024). This results in what Braun (2025) calls “non-democratic regionalism,” where formal institutions exist, but are hollowed out by national vetoes and intergovernmental bargaining. Power asymmetry is another challenge. Russia, as the largest economy and geopolitical actor in the bloc, plays a dominant role, prompting concerns about the Union’s hegemonic character (Kirkham, 2016). Kazakhstan and Belarus, for example, have frequently resisted Russian attempts to extend the EAEU’s competencies into political or security domains, emphasizing its purely economic character (Gromilova and Braun, 2024).

Moreover, while the EAEU has made progress in tariff unification and some regulatory harmonization, non-tariff barriers (NTBs) persist, particularly in the form of national technical standards, customs procedures, and opaque regulatory practices (Tarr, 2016). Institutional fragmentation is further exacerbated by the absence of an effective dispute resolution mechanism; the EAEU Court, although formally independent, lacks enforcement power (Vinokurov, 2017). Another barrier is the divergent political and economic systems of member states. The lack of democratic governance and weak rule of law hinder deeper integration, especially in areas requiring trust and transparency, such as financial regulation or joint infrastructure management (Braun et al., 2024).

The EAEU performs political work that extends beyond its rhetorical claims, even though its institutional development remains uneven. As a regional response to the post–Cold War shift toward multipolarity, the EAEU enables Russia to formalize regional leadership through common tariffs, regulatory harmonization, and coordinated economic policies—however partial their implementation may be. These institutional mechanisms, though often limited in scope, interact with geopolitical constraints and economic asymmetries, making discourse an important tool through which Russia seeks to stabilize regional expectations and frame the Union as a legitimate pole in a multipolar order.

At the same time, the limitations of the EAEU’s institutional performance shape the Union’s reliance on discursive practices as an instrument of political work. Russia’s narratives of a “Greater Eurasia,” sovereign modernization, and civilizational commonality serve to frame the Union as a purposeful geopolitical project capable of providing order and direction amid global power shifts. Such discourse is not presented here as replacing material and institutional processes, but rather as performative and compensatory: it stabilizes expectations among member states, legitimizes Russia’s leadership, and embeds the EAEU within the broader normative contestation of multipolarity. Discourse thus becomes a key arena where Russia negotiates its regional authority, especially in light of institutional underperformance and the economic diversity of member states.

Yet structural constraints—divergent national interests, unequal economic capacities, and domestic political sensitivities—continue to challenge the EAEU’s coherence and ability to function as an independent pole of regional order. These tensions raise questions about whether the EAEU can mature into a more effective regional institution or remain primarily a symbolic and rhetorical vehicle of Russian regional statecraft. The answer will depend on the extent to which the Union can transform its discursive ambitions into consistent political coordination and institutional consolidation in the years ahead.

5 The Belt and Road Initiative: reshaping global trade and Eurasian integration

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), also known as the “One Belt One Road” (OBOR) or the “New Silk Road,” is a strategic program launched by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2013, aimed at enhancing global trade and stimulating economic growth across Asia and beyond through infrastructure development. This ambitious initiative seeks to revitalize ancient trade routes and establish modern connections via land and sea, facilitating the flow of goods and services between China, Europe, Africa, and other regions (Lin, 2022; Xing, 2019). The BRI encompasses two main components: the Silk Road Economic Belt, which links China to Central and South Asia and extends into Europe, and the 21st-century Maritime Silk Road, connecting China to Southeast Asia, the Gulf Countries, and North Africa (Miksic, 2021; Yuan, 2019). The initiative is founded on five core goals: policy coordination, facilities connectivity, unimpeded trade, financial integration, and fostering people-to-people bonds (Li et al., 2023; gov.cn, 2015). By promoting infrastructure connectivity, the BRI aims to support economic development and poverty eradication in participating countries through enhanced transport systems, such as railways, highways, and ports (Mendes and Wang, 2023). Despite its potential benefits, the BRI has faced criticism and scrutiny. Scholars have challenged the prevailing narrative of “debt-trap diplomacy” associated with China’s investments, arguing that unintended negative consequences can arise from large-scale infrastructure projects, not solely related to the BRI (Himmer and Rod, 2022; Lai et al., 2020). Concerns about political expedience, weak legal frameworks, and corruption in recipient countries also pose significant risks to the sustainability and effectiveness of BRI projects, particularly in regions with fragile governance structures (Carrai, 2023; Mendes and Wang, 2023). Nonetheless, the BRI continues to be a pivotal aspect of China’s international economic strategy, influencing global trade dynamics and regional cooperation.

Since its launch, the BRI has expanded significantly in geographic scope and ambition. By 2020, China had signed over 200 cooperation documents with 138 countries and 30 international organizations (Wang, 2021). The initiative has gained traction, particularly among developing countries where infrastructure deficits are major impediments to growth. As Lin (2022) notes, the BRI is rooted in China’s own developmental experience and offers a model focused on physical infrastructure as the foundation for industrialization and modernization. The BRI’s global outreach is evident in landmark projects such as the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, the Port of Piraeus in Greece, and the Nairobi-Mombasa railway in Kenya. These projects symbolize China’s growing influence in global economic governance, offering an alternative to traditional Western-led models of development that are often conditional on political or economic reforms (Duarte et al., 2023). Furthermore, the BRI enhances China’s strategic presence while fostering new international economic corridors (Benabdallah, 2018).

However, the initiative is not without challenges. Critics argue that BRI projects sometimes lack transparency and saddle partner countries with unsustainable debt. The case of Sri Lanka’s Hambantota Port, which was leased to China after debt repayment difficulties, has become emblematic of concerns surrounding “debt-trap diplomacy” (Duarte et al., 2023). Wang (2021) points out that the legal framework of many BRI agreements—primarily composed of non-binding Memoranda of Understanding—limits enforceability and accountability, raising further concerns about governance. Despite these issues, the BRI represents a significant shift in global development paradigms. Unlike the neoliberal, market-driven model promoted by institutions like the IMF and World Bank, the BRI champions a state-led approach, placing the government at the center of strategic economic planning and implementation (Xing, 2019). This “globalization with Chinese characteristics” presents a distinct model in which long-term infrastructure investment replaces short-term structural adjustment policies as the engine of development (Panibratov et al., 2020). Moreover, the BRI offers developing countries an opportunity to engage in South–South cooperation without the constraints of Western conditionalities. Through people-to-people exchanges, training programs, and economic integration, China is cultivating new norms and relationships, especially in the Global South (Benabdallah, 2018).

At the same time, the BRI is deeply shaped by narrative and ideological work. Chinese leaders frame the initiative through concepts such as ‘win–win cooperation,’ ‘community of shared future for mankind,’ and ‘mutual consultation, joint contribution, shared benefits,’ which serve to legitimize China’s expanding international role. These narratives perform political work by presenting China as a benevolent rather than coercive actor, positioning the BRI as a cooperative alternative to Western-led development models, and redefining the norms of regional and global cooperation (Callahan, 2016; Benabdallah, 2018). The discursive dimension is therefore not secondary: it shapes how participating states understand the BRI, how China justifies its growing presence abroad, and how the initiative is embedded within competing visions of world order.

Yet the BRI is also constrained by structural and institutional challenges. Governance weaknesses in partner countries, uneven legal frameworks, and bureaucratic fragmentation in China itself create conditions for cost overruns, corruption, and implementation delays (Carrai, 2023; Himmer and Rod, 2022). The initiative’s reliance on Memoranda of Understanding—often non-binding and difficult to enforce—creates uncertainty regarding long-term commitments and accountability (Wang, 2021). These limitations underscore that the BRI’s political and normative ambitions must be understood alongside the institutional and administrative realities that shape its implementation.

Taken together, the BRI exemplifies how authoritarian regionalism operates at the intersection of material infrastructure, institutional mechanisms, and narrative construction. Its political logic extends beyond development financing: it aims to produce new regional configurations, redistribute authority within Eurasia and the Global South, and normalize China’s state-led approach to economic governance. The initiative thus functions simultaneously as a strategic connectivity program and a discursive project that embeds China’s vision of sovereignty, multipolarity, and non-interference into emerging regional orders. Whether the BRI can translate its expansive narratives into sustainable institutional outcomes remains a central question for understanding China’s evolving role in global governance.

6 Comparative analysis of the EAEU and BRI alignment

This section applies Krippendorff’s Qualitative Content Analysis to comparatively examine how Russia’s Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) and China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) articulate overlapping yet distinct visions of regional order. By treating official speeches by Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping as discursive events, the analysis identifies the linguistic patterns through which each leader constructs cooperation, sovereignty, and development as central organizing principles of authoritarian regionalism. Both initiatives combine material integration—through infrastructure, trade, and connectivity—with symbolic legitimation based on cultural identity and political autonomy. The result is a shared narrative architecture in which economic cooperation and geopolitical resistance coexist, framing an alternative order to Western liberal globalism.

The comparative framework situates both projects within post–Cold War transformations and the reconfiguration of global power. Russia’s EAEU and China’s BRI operate as distinct institutional models but converge ideationally around sovereignty, multipolarity, and peace. Their rhetorical alignment demonstrates that authoritarian regionalism functions simultaneously as a practical and symbolic project: practically through infrastructure-led connectivity, and symbolically through the discursive normalization of non-liberal values such as civilizational diversity and state sovereignty. In this sense, the EAEU and BRI serve as mirror images of the same structural impulse—to construct legitimate alternatives to Western-dominated norms of globalization.

6.1 Cooperation, growth, and sovereignty within the multipolar order

Across the Russian corpus (22 speeches, 2013–2024), cooperation emerges as the most frequent and semantically flexible indicator, appearing 187 times, often in co-location with development (41), growth (7), multipolarity (6), and sovereignty (4). Using Krippendorff’s (2019) principle of semantic clustering, this pattern suggests that “cooperation” functions as a nodal point linking economic discourse with geopolitical and civilizational claims. In Putin’s speeches, cooperation is not simply a synonym for partnership; it constitutes the linguistic bridge between the EAEU’s developmental goals and Russia’s quest for global status. For example, at the Eastern Economic Forum 2024, Putin stated that “only through cooperation and mutual benefit can Eurasia achieve its development potential,” a sentence that encodes both pragmatic integration and ideological self-determination. The repetition of cooperation in proximity to sovereignty and multipolarity thus indicates how economic language becomes infused with political meaning.

The rhetorical consistency across Putin’s speeches reveals that cooperation serves a dual function: as a pragmatic device for economic growth and as a symbolic mechanism of geopolitical resistance. Co-occurrences with harmony (7) and benefit (5) show attempts to frame Russia’s regional order not as adversarial, but as an inclusive alternative emphasizing balance and mutual advantage. This aligns with Krippendorff’s notion of contextual complementarity, wherein recurring associations stabilize meaning through positive reinforcement. In this sense, the EAEU discourse projects cooperation as both defensive sovereignty and constructive pluralism, resisting Western dominance while promoting an image of Eurasia as a peaceful, multipolar space of shared prosperity.

In contrast, Xi Jinping’s five major speeches between 2013 and 2023 feature cooperation 157 times, but with distinct semantic companions: infrastructure (28) and investment (24). Here, cooperation acquires a material and technocratic valence, linked to logistics, transport corridors, and digital connectivity. This contrasts with Putin’s more normative framing. In Xi’s Boao and BRI Forum addresses, cooperation operates as a functional principle of economic governance, expressing the logic that physical integration produces peace through interdependence. For example, in the 2019 BRI Forum, Xi emphasized “advancing high-quality Belt and Road cooperation through sustainable infrastructure,” embedding the term within a discourse of technical efficiency and modernization rather than overt geopolitics.

Nevertheless, the co-occurrence of cooperation with innovation (8) and peace (7) expands its interpretive field, reflecting a broader civilizational teleology. In Krippendorffian terms, these lexical clusters produce a semantic gradient—from economic pragmatism to moral universalism—through which China articulates its role as a provider of global public goods. Unlike Russia’s discursive strategy of resistance, Xi’s framing legitimizes leadership through technocratic benevolence, projecting cooperation as both an instrument of connectivity and a moral blueprint for a harmonious world order.

Comparatively, these findings reveal that both leaders construct “cooperation” as a strategic signifier that transcends its economic referent. Yet while Putin’s discourse fuses cooperation with sovereignty and resistance, Xi’s aligns it with infrastructure and harmony. The difference is thus one of orientation: Russia’s cooperation is ideological and defensive; China’s is technocratic and expansive. Both, however, normalize the principle of non-Western globalization, positioning authoritarian regionalism as cooperative, peaceful, and legitimate.

6.2 Geopolitical vision and converging ideologies

The institutionalization of the EAEU and the expansion of the BRI together articulate a shared geopolitical lexicon aimed at contesting Western liberal dominance. In Putin’s speeches, sovereignty (48 mentions), multipolarity (23), Eurasia (17), and independence (13) form a dense cluster of signifiers that construct Russia as a sovereign pole within a multipolar system. According to Krippendorff’s (2019) model of discursive co-location, these terms’ frequent co-occurrence indicates a stable conceptual network that links identity, autonomy, and regional leadership. Phrases such as “Eurasia’s independent path within a multipolar world” typify this relational framing: sovereignty functions as the foundation, multipolarity as the structure, and cooperation as the legitimating narrative. In this way, Putin’s discourse not only defends autonomy but produces legitimacy through repetition—a hallmark of authoritarian discourse formation.

Xi Jinping’s discourse, by contrast, exhibits a rhetoric of restraint. The BRI is consistently framed through peace (20 mentions), harmony (4), and sovereignty (3), revealing what Krippendorff would call a semantic containment strategy—a deliberate avoidance of confrontational language to preserve soft-power legitimacy. The low frequency of sovereignty does not imply absence of intent but signals a discursive substitution, where peace and harmony perform sovereignty’s ideological function. In effect, China’s rhetoric transforms political autonomy into a moral universalism, reframing self-determination as a condition for shared stability. This aligns with Xi’s broader civilizational discourse—particularly the “Community of Shared Future for Mankind”—where sovereignty and peace converge as mutually reinforcing signifiers of legitimacy and leadership.

The co-occurrence of multipolarity and cooperation in Putin’s corpus (six times) parallels Xi’s recurrent pairing of infrastructure and investment (five times). Both patterns demonstrate the operationalization of shared principles through distinct linguistic economies: Russia’s emphasis on political autonomy and balance, and China’s on material interdependence and progress. In Krippendorff’s terms, this constitutes an intertextual alignment, where two communicative systems mirror each other’s structure while differing in expressive modality. Both leaders, therefore, participate in the construction of a shared authoritarian imaginary, in which regionalism becomes both the mechanism and metaphor for an emerging post-liberal order.

Despite stylistic and rhetorical differences, the convergence of discursive themes—sovereignty, cooperation, and peace—suggests that the EAEU and BRI are mutually legitimating narratives rather than competing frameworks. Russia’s discourse emphasizes resistance through sovereignty, while China’s advances influence through connectivity. Together, they form what might be termed a dual discourse of authoritarian multilateralism, offering moral and developmental alternatives to Western liberal institutionalism. In this alignment, Greater Eurasia and the Community of Shared Future for Mankind serve as intertextual anchors linking Moscow’s and Beijing’s narratives within a shared semantic architecture of multipolarity, stability, and civilizational pluralism.

Through Krippendorff’s Qualitative Content Analysis, this comparative section demonstrates that the EAEU and BRI are not merely economic platforms but discursive architectures that construct legitimacy through language. The repeated association of cooperation with sovereignty in Putin’s speeches and with infrastructure in Xi’s illustrates how each leader uses language to translate material initiatives into normative projects. Both rely on semantic stabilization—the repeated use of core indicators to reduce interpretive ambiguity and anchor legitimacy. The co-occurrence patterns across the datasets confirm that authoritarian regionalism derives its coherence from discursive repetition rather than institutional uniformity.

Ultimately, the comparative analysis reveals a shared lexicon of order-building that merges pragmatism with ideology: cooperation signifies inclusive but hierarchical governance; sovereignty legitimizes autonomy under multipolarity; infrastructure and innovation symbolize modernization as legitimacy; peace and harmony transform political control into moral order. Through this discursive interplay, both Russia and China articulate a non-liberal model of regionalism that transforms integration into an act of identity-making. In Krippendorff’s interpretive terms, meaning here is not discovered but constructed through repetition—a performative process that redefines the normative foundations of global order.

7 Authoritarian regionalism, new regionalism, and the post-Western geopolitical imaginary

The findings of this study show that both the EAEU and the BRI operate simultaneously as material frameworks and discursive projects, confirming the theoretical premise that authoritarian regionalism is sustained through a combination of institutional design, narrative production, and geopolitical positioning. This section will show how narratives can function as a locus for identity formation, a medium for transmitting agendas, and an indication of the functioning and outcomes of authoritarian regionalism. This is in line with the investigative objectives set out by Obedynkova and Libman (2019, p. 36): to understand the effects of authoritarian regimes of the member states on the functioning and outcomes of the regional organizations they create. To achieve this goal, researchers can investigate whether organizations could still have an impact on regime transition trajectories—albeit indirect and complex ones—and whether the prominence of authoritarian regimes in regional organizations always leads to hierarchical power structures. Using the results of the content analysis in section 6, the following will focus on discussing the functioning and outcomes of regional organizations within discursive practice, rather than providing a material explanation.

7.1 Authoritarian regionalism and the regimes’ transition trajectories

Obydenkova and Libman (2019, p. 34) define authoritarian regionalism as regional organizations that are created by strong autocracies either acting as leading states or constituting the core membership, by which it can become a mechanism of autocratic consolidation in member states and beyond. To prove the causal link between authoritarian regionalism and the authoritarian trajectories of the political regimes of its members, Obydenkova and Libman (2019) proposed that non-democratic regional organizations attract non-democratic members. In this part, we focus specifically on the role of power asymmetry, as reflected in the discursive practices of regime leaders, to understand how authoritarian leadership shapes the meaning and purpose of regional cooperation.

In the case of the EAEU, the characteristics of power asymmetry are very evident, centered on Russia as the predominant actor that always takes on a greater role in constructing the discourse of the organization’s identity. Putin used sovereignty, multipolarity, Eurasia, and independence as signifiers that construct Russia as a sovereign pole within a multipolar system. This is in line with Obydenkova and Libman (2019), who mention that the asymmetry occurred as in the case with the dominant role of the Russian Federation. However, Obedynkova and Libman tend to focus their arguments more on the institutional commitment of the organization’s members rather than on discursive indications. During the period 2013–2024, Russia appears capable of maintaining the appeal of the EAEU as a regional mechanism, particularly in the economic sphere, without encountering much resistance from its member states. The appeal of the EAEU, with Russia at its center, can also be criticized as part of Russia’s manipulation of relatively weak member states that have no alternative but to choose this economic regionalism scheme. Manipulation is very likely to occur at the level of informal governance, particularly in the resolution of member states’ internal politics, so that the dominance of informal governance can produce a “formal façade” (Obydenkova and Libman, 2019, p. 40).

Belarus (one of the EAEU members) is a classic example that demonstrates the success of Russian autocracy in controlling domestic political issues. In August 2020, Belarusian President Aleksander Lukashenko was accused of rigging the election he won and faced democratic protests from the public. Lukashenko chose to remain in power and suppress the demonstrations through violent means. In this situation, Vladimir Putin even made a statement in favor of Lukashenko in an interview with Rossiya TV, in which Putin made a firm statement:

Russia and Belarus are obliged to help each other protect their sovereignty, external borders, and stability. This is exactly what it says.

In this connection, we have certain obligations towards Belarus, and this is how Mr. Lukashenko has formulated his question. He said that he would like us to provide assistance to him if this should become necessary. I replied that Russia would honour all its obligations. (Kremlin.ru)

Another event with a similar response occurred when Kazakhstan (another member of the EAEU) experienced large-scale demonstrations in January 2022 following a sudden increase in liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) prices after the government lifted its price cap on 1 January. The protests began peacefully in the oil-producing city of Zhanaozen and quickly spread to other parts of the country, especially Almaty, Kazakhstan’s largest city, where demonstrations escalated into violent unrest. The situation was exacerbated by broader public dissatisfaction with the government, persistent inequality, and long-standing socioeconomic grievances. On 6 January, the CSTO announced that it would deploy a joint contingent to Kazakhstan, framing the mission as a peacekeeping operation. The decision was justified by invoking Article 4 of the Collective Security Treaty, which stipulates that when a member state faces aggression or an armed threat to its stability, territorial integrity, or sovereignty, the other members are obligated—upon request—to provide necessary assistance, including military support. During the CSTO meeting in Yerevan, Armenia, on November 23, 2022, Putin stated that:

The efficiency of these measures was evidenced by the CSTO’s peacekeeping operation in Kazakhstan in January, which prevented the seizure of power by extremists and helped stabilise the internal political situation in the republic. Mr. Tokayev expressed his gratitude for the help and support. Using this opportunity, I would like to congratulate him again on his convincing victory in the elections and wish him success in implementing his ambitious plans to transform the political, social and economic life of the country. (Kremlin.ru)

A comparison of these two events—and the responses they triggered—shows that the reactions of both Belarusian and Kazakhstani authorities, as well as Putin’s intervention, reflect a broader pattern: autocracies within the same regional framework often respond in similar ways. Although Russia’s response was not directly connected to the economic and trade mandate of the EAEU and increasingly overlapped with political and security concerns, Putin’s statements suggest that Belarus and Kazakhstan play an important role in reinforcing a shared authoritarian orientation within the region. In addressing both crises, Putin underscored the primacy of national sovereignty and rejected any external interference in domestic affairs. He also emphasized that managing internal unrest is the responsibility of the affected states themselves, with Russia providing assistance only upon request and strictly within the institutional framework of the CSTO.

Membership in such a “club of autocrats” (Debre, 2021) creates expectations of mutual support, especially in defending national sovereignty, political stability, and regime survival. Although the public has limited insight into the informal coordination that likely occurred among leaders, the formal façade of unity—such as Putin’s televised statements on Rossiya TV and the emergency CSTO meeting—sent a clear signal that member states were committed to resolving crises in ways that deviate from liberal norms. In this sense, the EAEU functions as a commitment device that encourages Belarus and Kazakhstan to align with authoritarian norms of regionalization and to uphold collective regime security.

Meanwhile, in the case of the BRI, China’s dominant role as a provider of financial assistance—primarily to countries in Asia and Africa—does not necessarily indicate a tendency toward strengthening authoritarian regimes among recipient states. China’s approach emphasizes long-term economic gains, infrastructure control, and policy influence that advances its strategic interests, rather than promoting ideological alignment. A large body of literature discusses the risks associated with BRI financing, including concerns over potential debt distress in African countries and rising anti-China sentiment linked to the influx of Chinese workers (Nur Mutia and de Archellie, 2023). These dynamics suggest that many recipient governments engage with the BRI primarily for pragmatic economic reasons rather than political or ideological convergence.

In terms of outcomes, China’s position as a major BRI creditor has not produced clear evidence of a “club of autocrats” or a systematic pattern of regime authoritarianization over the past two decades. Instead, the BRI has largely functioned as an instrumental commitment device for recipient states seeking infrastructure investment and economic growth, rather than as a mechanism for cultivating autocratic governance. In this sense, unlike Russia’s use of the EAEU to reinforce a shared authoritarian orientation, the BRI’s influence remains predominantly economic and technocratic.

7.2 Hierarchical power structure within authoritarian regionalism

The second component of Obedynkova and Libman’s theoretical framework on authoritarian regionalism concerns the way in which the dominance of authoritarian regimes within a regional organization tends to produce hierarchical power structures. They argue that these hierarchical structures are reinforced both institutionally and discursively, as dominant autocracies use their superior resources and narrative control to steer regional organizations toward outcomes that secure their own regime interests. Russia’s dominance as the leading autocracy within the organization enables it to use narrative framing to secure a relative advantage, particularly in shaping agendas and steering the discursive direction of regional cooperation. This is evident in Putin’s frequent use of terms such as cooperation, development, growth, multipolarity, and sovereignty, which collectively reinforce Russia’s preferred regional vision.

Russia’s preferred narratives draw on its historical associations, material capabilities, and the regional vision it seeks to advance. In contrast, narrative elements that help bridge interests with other member states tend to arise from shared responses to exogenous pressures—particularly Western liberal norms—as well as from broader ambitions such as promoting a multipolar world order and technological advancement. At this level, the functioning of regional organizations can be better understood by examining their non-material resources, especially the discursive practices through which the predominant autocracy shapes collective meaning and legitimizes regional action.

Meanwhile, in the case of the BRI, the use of loan instruments demonstrates a pronounced power hierarchy, with China occupying a dominant position. In several instances, China has been able to influence policy choices in recipient countries, even as these governments publicly deny any loss of sovereignty and emphasize the formal rhetoric of equality that accompanies BRI cooperation. The Indonesian case is illustrative: China played a decisive role in shaping Indonesia’s decision to partner on the Jakarta–Bandung high-speed rail project and has secured significant involvement in mineral extraction projects in Sulawesi. These developments were followed by the arrival of large numbers of Chinese foreign workers, which contributed to public resentment and perceptions that the Indonesian government had ceded too much ground to China. Such patterns suggest that China’s dominance as a creditor enables subtle forms of policy influence through informal channels of coordination.

Hierarchical power relations in both the EAEU and the BRI tend to manifest through informal coordination, while the formal façade of cooperation is dominated discursively by the leading states—Russia and China. This discursive dominance is visible in narrative constructions that reflect and reinforce the preferences of the dominant countries, shaping how regional goals, problems, and solutions are publicly framed. Such patterns suggest a form of influence that operates through the combined use of material leverage and narrative control, enabling the leading autocracies to steer regional agendas without overt coercion. At the institutional level, however, there is still limited evidence that participation in the BRI has prompted member states to adopt more authoritarian political practices. Although their membership signals a degree of alignment with authoritarian norms, observable regime transformations remain inconclusive. This gap highlights a valuable direction for future research: examining whether prolonged engagement in authoritarian-led regional organizations produces measurable long-term effects on the political trajectories and institutional preferences of member states.

8 Conclusion

This article has examined the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) through the analytical lens of authoritarian regionalism as articulated by Obydenkova and Libman (2019). Their framework emphasizes two core questions: whether authoritarian-led regional organizations influence regime trajectories among member states, and whether the predominance of autocracies within such organizations tends to generate hierarchical governance structures.

The comparative analysis reveals that authoritarian regionalism is sustained through a dual mechanism that Obydenkova and Libman describe: institutional design—often informal, flexible, and leader-centered—and discursive legitimation, which stabilizes authoritarian preferences without requiring supranational enforcement. The EAEU exemplifies this dynamic. Although formally a rules-based economic union, its functioning is deeply shaped by Russia’s discursive and material dominance. The repetition of key signifiers—sovereignty, multipolarity, cooperation, and independence—constructs Russia as the central pole of a multipolar Eurasian order and affirms the norm of non-interference. This reflects the “formal façade” phenomenon identified by Obydenkova and Libman, where official rhetoric masks asymmetric informal governance systems that strengthen incumbents. The Belarus and Kazakhstan cases further demonstrate how authoritarian regionalism can indirectly support regime survival by reinforcing shared norms of sovereignty, crisis framing, and resistance to external pressure.

By contrast, the BRI demonstrates a different configuration of authoritarian regionalism. While China holds overwhelming material leverage, its discursive framing emphasizes harmony, connectivity, peace, and development rather than explicit political alignment. As Obedynkova and Libman note, authoritarian organizations do not necessarily produce uniform political outcomes, and the capacity of authoritarian powers to shape regime trajectories depends on the combination of instruments available—financial, institutional, and ideational. In the BRI’s case, evidence of authoritarian diffusion is limited: the initiative primarily operates as an economic commitment device rather than a mechanism for consolidating autocratic governance. Nonetheless, hierarchical patterns are visible in China’s ability to shape partner-state policy choices through loans, infrastructure control, and informal conditionalities.

By engaging with new regionalism, this study shows that authoritarian regionalism is not merely a geopolitical strategy but a discursive construction of a post-Western order, in which regions are shaped through semantic architectures that define identity, legitimacy, and acceptable modes of cooperation. Russia and China use regional discourse as a tool of world-making—challenging liberal conditionalities, elevating sovereignty, and articulating civilizational narratives that justify their leadership—yet a discourse-centered approach also has limits, since Obedynkova and Libman emphasize that NDRO influence often operates through informal mechanisms such as elite coordination or resource redistribution that may not be visible in public rhetoric. Even so, the analysis advances theoretical understandings of authoritarian regionalism by showing that authoritarian organizations like the EAEU and BRI function as hybrid projects—economic, geopolitical, and performative—which shape member-state behavior through a combination of material asymmetry and discursive coherence, enabling authoritarian powers to navigate and rearticulate globalization around principles of sovereignty, controlled interdependence, and civilizational pluralism.

Data availability statement

The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation.

Author contributions

RA: Conceptualization, Writing – review & editing, Writing – original draft, Validation, Supervision, Formal analysis, Methodology, Software. CA: Validation, Methodology, Software, Formal analysis, Data curation, Writing – review & editing. PA: Investigation, Data curation, Resources, Writing – review & editing, Validation, Methodology.

Funding

The author(s) declared that financial support was not received for this work and/or its publication.

Conflict of interest

The author(s) declared that this work was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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The author(s) declared that Generative AI was not used in the creation of this manuscript.

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2018, December 6. Speech at a Meeting of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council. Sochi, Russia. http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/59323.

2019, December 20. Speech at a Meeting of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council. St. Petersburg, Russia. http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/62377.

2020, December 11. Speech at a Meeting of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council. Moscow, Russia. http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/64643/print.

2021, October 14. Speech at a Meeting of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council. St. Petersburg, Russia. http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/66927.

2022, May 27. Speech at a Meeting of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council. Moscow, Russia. http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/68494.

2022, October 22. Speech at the Plenary Session of the 19th Annual Meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club. Moscow, Russia. https://valdaiclub.com/events/posts/articles/vladimir-putin-meets-with-members-of-the-valdai-club/.

2022, December 9. Speech at a Meeting of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council. Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. http://www.en.kremlin.ru/catalog/persons/659/events/70058.

2023, December 25. Speech at a Meeting of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council. St. Petersburg, Russia. http://en.special.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/73127.

2024, September 5. Speech at the Plenary Session of the 9th Eastern Economic Forum. Vladivostok, Russia. http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/75029.

2024, November 11. Speech at the Plenary Session of the 21st Annual Meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club. Sochi, Russia. https://valdaiclub.com/events/posts/articles/putin-plenary-session-2024/.

2024, December 4. Speech at Russia Calling! Investment Forum. Moscow, Russia. http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/75751.

2024, December 24. Speech at a Meeting of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council. Leningrad, Russia. http://www.en.special.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/75948.

Xi, Jinping

2013, September 8. Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the People’s Republic of China: Speech by H. E. Xi Jinping President of the People’s Republic of China At Nazarbayev University. https://worldjpn.net/documents/texts/BR/20130907.O1E.html.

2013, October 3. Speech by H. E. Xi Jinping, President of the People’s Republic of China to the Indonesian parliament. Jakarta, Indonesia http://www.asean-china-center.org/english/2013-10/03/c_133062675.htm.

2015, March 28. Towards a community of common destiny and a new future for Asia. Speech at the opening of the Boao Forum for Asia Annual Conference 2015. Boao, Hainan, China. https://www.mfa.gov.cn/eng/zy/jj/2015zt/xjpcxbayzlt2015nnh/202406/t20240606_11381658.html.

2017, June 20. Speech at the Opening Ceremony of the 1st Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation. Beijing, China. https://english.www.gov.cn/archive/publications/2017/06/20/content_281475691873460.htm.

2019, April 27. Speech at the Opening Ceremony of the 2nd Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation. Beijing, China. https://www.mfa.gov.cn/eng/xw/zyjh/202405/t20240530_11341286.html.

2021, April 21. Pulling Together Through Adversity and Toward a Shared Future for All. Speech at the opening of the Boao Forum for Asia Annual Conference 2021. Boao, Hainan, China. https://www.mfa.gov.cn/eng/xw/zyjh/202405/t20240530_11341525.html.

2022, April 21. Rising to Challenges and Building a Bright Future Through Cooperation. Speech at the opening of the Boao Forum for Asia Annual Conference 2022. Boao, Hainan, China. https://english.www.gov.cn/news/topnews/202204/21/content_WS62616c3bc6d02e5335329c22.html.

2023, October 18. Speech at the Opening Ceremony of the 3rd Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation. Beijing, China. https://english.www.gov.cn/news/202310/18/content_WS652fc328c6d0868f4e8e064e.html.

Prime Minister, Li Keqiang

2016, March 25. Jointly Draw Asia’s Dynamic New Vision. Speech at the opening of the Boao Forum for Asia Annual Conference 2016. Boao, Hainan, China. https://english.www.gov.cn/premier/news/2016/03/24/content_281475313491762.htm.

2019, Jointly Tackling Challenges for Common Development. Speech at the opening of the Boao Forum for Asia Annual Conference 2019. Boao, Hainan, China. https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=http://english.www.gov.cn/r/Pub/GOV/ReceivedContent/Other/2019-03-30/FullTextPremierLiKeqiangskeynotespeechatopeningofBoaoForumforAsiaAnnualConference2019.doc&ved=2ahUKEwiVps-u6L6QAxXwzDgGHTVQMqAQFnoECBgQAQ&usg=AOvVaw1U_CE8-RvObUfU5aKuiAC1.

2023, March 30. Following the Vision of a Community with a Shared Future for Mankind and Bringing More Certainty to World Peace and Development. Speech at the opening of the Boao Forum for Asia Annual Conference 2023. Boao, Hainan, China. https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/xw/zyjh/202405/t20240530_11340714.html.

Prime Minister, Zhao Leji

2024, March 29. Working Together to Meet Challenges and Create a Better Future for Asia and the World. Speech at the opening of the Boao Forum for Asia Annual Conference 2024. Boao, Hainan, China. https://news.cgtn.com/news/2024-03-29/Full-text-Keynote-speech-by-Zhao-Leji-at-Boao-Forum-for-Asia-2024-1smHtzMzD4A/p.html.

Vice Prime Minister, Zhang Gaoli

2017, March 25. Work Together to Advance Economic Globalization and Create a Better Future for Asia and the World Speech at the opening of the Boao Forum for Asia Annual Conference 2017. Boao, Hainan, China. http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2017-03/27/c_136162062.htm.