TY - JOUR AU - Sarieddine, Toufic PY - 2021/03/21 Y2 - 2024/03/28 TI - Middle Kingdom Enters Middle East: A World-Systems Analysis of Peripheralization along the Maritime Silk Road Initiative JF - Journal of World-Systems Research JA - JWSR VL - 27 IS - 1 SE - Research Articles DO - 10.5195/jwsr.2021.1027 UR - http://jwsr.pitt.edu/ojs/jwsr/article/view/1027 SP - 177-201 AB - <p>Through the lens of world-systems analysis, this research argues that Beijing is creating a miniature world-system overlapping with the United States-led world-system via its Belt Road Initiative (BRI). Although China has not yet become a core power, its BRI seems to possess the qualities of a new world-system in the making, within which China enjoys hegemonic traits such as economic and military might and capable alternative institutions. This BRI-bound world-system consists of BRI participant states whose areas and processes are being molded to better fit China as core and hegemon; a phenomenon known as peripheralization. In the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), the Maritime Silk Road Initiative (MSRI) appears to be peripheralizing Arab states into this BRI-bound world-system through China’s growing economic dominance of the region and promotion of new modi operandi. After arguing the emergence of the BRI-bound world-system and establishing China’s peripheralization capacity, Lebanon is taken as a case study of a peripheral MENA state to illustrate how predominant Western hegemony can hamper China’s peripheralization apparatus, forcing it to choose areas/processes of the highest immediate relevance for focused peripheralization efforts.</p> ER -