Na(rra)tion building: Tourism and geopolitics along the Belt and Road Initiative

With the founding of the Belt and Road Initiative by China in 2013, a global project was created with the aim of shaping geopolitics and tourism. This position paper intends to investigate how German narratives about the BRI influence geopolitical and touristic imaginaries along its routes. The researchers of this study formulated three objectives, namely the identification of the importance of narrative in tourism, German narratives on the BRI and China and greater understanding of narration shaping processes along the BRI and its implications on tourism and geopolitics. The purpose of this paper is to analyse tourism and the BRI through a lens of public discourse, narratives and storytelling, understanding narratives as the ‘shapers’ of nation and tourist destination. Drawing on a mixed-methods approach, interviews and an online survey were conducted, whereby pieces of narratives on BRI, China and its relations to Europe were captured and then analysed. We argue that the Belt and Road Initiative as a malleable project, formed by geopolitics and tourism, has the potential to be part of a na(rra)tion building process, shaping tourism imaginaries as well as international relations, going far beyond the idea of a nation.