This chapter first gives an overview of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), including its background and content. It then examines how major Western powers are responding to the BRI by proposing alternatives, thus illustrating its geopolitical and geo-economic implications. Following this, it deconstructs the legal framework of the BRI and explains the approach with which China is putting the BRI into practice. Finally, it explores what the BRI may bring about in the international legal order and the Chinese legal order. Through the prism of the BRI, this chapter will help appreciation of how China, as it becomes a leading state, exerts influence on the international order, which is experiencing a tremendous transformation.

The US-China trade war and looming ‘technological de-coupling’ instigated major revisions of Chinese laws and regulations. These recent amendments represent a major shift in the role assigned to export restrictions. In particular, China is more willing than before to use export restrictions as a geopolitical tool. To test the veracity of this assertion, this chapter analyses China’s use of export restrictions in the period from 2001 to 2021. It suggests that three distinct phases can be discerned: (i) the elimination of export restrictions before and after joining the WTO; (ii) the selective use of export restrictions for domestic policy reasons; and (iii) a shift toward strategic use of export restrictions as an instrument of geopolitical competition. Several implications flow from this new development: it endangers existing supply chains, may bifurcate the global economy by sapping its growth potential and contributes to the erosion of the multilateral trading system.