Discourse Power as a Means to ‘Struggle for Position’: a Critical Case Study of the Belt and Road Narrative’s Effects on Foreign Policy Formulation in the Netherlands

This article investigates China’s use of strategic narratives to facilitate its geopolitical return, through a critical case study of the Belt and Road narrative’s effects on foreign policy formulation in the Netherlands. Departing from postmodern critiques of the traditional Western approach to soft power and Chinese elites’ conceptualization of the Belt and Road as a means to contest the West’s discursive hegemony, it initially proposes a theoretical framework meant to identify co-optive processes resulting from the narrative’s reception. It subsequently tests this framework, which combines the strategic narrative strand of constructivist soft power theory with Gallarotti’s concept of ‘bargaining spaces’ to structure the analysis, on the the Netherlands’ in the context of its recent revision of its China policy. By connecting elements of the narrative with co-optive processes found to occur within three subnational cohorts (business, media ecology, and foreign policy establishment), it highlights that Western countries may be more susceptible to non-coercive Chinese influence than is conventionally thought. In terms of a theoretical contribution, the article demonstrates that a decentred and outcome-oriented approach to narratives like the Belt and Road may enhance understanding of the mechanisms underlying China’s ability to use rhetorical strategy to tilt political battlefields to its favor.