Traditionally, we tend to discuss major projects in the field of engineering infrastructure or project management, thus focusing more on the professional management within a project, such as investment, schedule, quality, and safety. However, major projects have gone far beyond this scope due to their large investment scale, extensive coverage, far-reaching influence, high degree of concern, and a large number of stakeholders, and it’s necessary to reexamine major projects and their social complexity from a broader perspective. As the major projects of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) are global ones, we cannot simply apply the management thinking for major projects “in China”, and in particular, we should deeply understand the symbolic significance of the major projects of the BRI in terms of politics, policies, and diplomacy.

Major projects serve as a political symbol.

The unique significance of major projects has attracted widespread attention and made them a new phenomenon in the field of social sciences. Major projects are often tangible markers of “great accomplishments” by a national or local government, giant vehicles for political performance or some political signals, and therefore, are valued by the government as representatives of its major achievements. Be it a church or palace of the past or a skyscraper, a large airport or Olympic Games venue of the present day, they all have symbolic significance. The success of major projects can draw out a sense of community pride, and politicians can gain a sense of accomplishment from their visibility to the public and media, such as the enjoyment of exposure in grand groundbreaking or completion ceremonies, or the re-election or promotion of senior officials, making major projects an irreplaceable political symbol. For example, Egypt’s plan to “move to the new capital” is the largest project since President Sisi took office, costing USD 45 billion and including a 345-meter building, the highest in Africa, to be built by a Chinese company. According to President Sisi, “moving to the new capital” heralds “a new era of modern governmental work”, and he has repeatedly said that the opening of the new administrative capital will mark the birth of a “new state and new republic”. Therefore, the project is much more than a traditional infrastructure project.

This political symbolism has promoted the upward spiral of construction scale of major projects, which evolve into large-scale social projects and economic development tools designed to ambitiously change the social structure and economic development process and to advance them by mobilizing massive social resources as well as collective actions, thereby establishing the historical position and political legitimacy of politicians. Because of this political symbolism, major projects are often linked and tied to the political stands of different parties and are “labeled” as a political symbol. As a result, they may be interrupted, substantially changed, or even canceled during regime changes after general elections.

From the current point of view, some major projects with distinct political symbols face greater uncertainty or risk of suspension as affected by regime changes in some countries along the Belt and Road or global landscape reshaping. For example, the East Coast Rail Link (ECRL) project, the largest economic and trade cooperation project between China and Malaysia, became a bone of contention among different political stands due to regime change from 2016 to 2019 and was unilaterally requested to be suspended by the new government of Prime Minister Mahathir on the grounds of “national interest”. Most countries along the Belt and Road are faced with this political risk of frequent regime changes, so the political connection risk of major projects should be highly valued.

Major projects serve as a policy symbol.

Major projects also serve as policy instruments and policy implementation vehicles. Major projects in different periods have significant differences in policy orientations, and they, as symbols of government policy transformation, have strong economic significance, mainly because major projects with large scale and investment are often of strategic significance, and they play an exemplary role in driving the systematic transformation of related industrial chains and value chains while acting as a specific extension of major projects serving as a political symbol. The policy symbolism of major projects is mainly reflected in aspects such as changes in development philosophies, competition in implementation rules, reshaping of industrial layouts, support for industry development, and innovation in development models. In fact, all the programs in competition with the BRI, such as the Group of Seven (G7)’s “Build Back Better World”, the EU’s “A Globally Connected Europe” strategy, the “Blue Dot Network” initiative of the U.S., Japan, and Australia, and the UK’s “Clean Green Initiative”, intend to achieve the main political incentives behind them in the form of new policies and rules.

Different regions of the world have different development aspirations due to disparate development, and major projects in line with the policy orientations of local governments are more likely to be widely supported. For example, Africa and Southeast Asia tend to attract investment in transportation infrastructure and industrial parks, while cooperation in major projects is more often seen in the areas of renewable energy, clean energy, and new energy in Europe and South America. With the far-reaching impacts of global climate change, “carbon peaking and carbon neutrality” sustainable development strategy, the post-COVID-19 era, and international landscape reshaping, we must value the policy symbolism of the major projects of the BRI, comply with the general trend of the world’s development today, strive for the widespread support of countries along the Belt and Road, and achieve higher-quality development of the BRI.

In fact, China has always attached great importance to the leading position and demonstration role of major projects in policy terms since the implementation of the BRI. In his addresses at symposiums on the development of the BRI in 2016, 2018, and 2021, General Secretary Xi Jinping clearly pointed out the focused areas, development priorities and development philosophies of key projects, demonstration projects, major projects and landmark projects at different stages. At the third symposium on the development of the BRI, Xi mentioned that the BRI should “aim for high-standard, sustainable and people-centered progress” and “create landmark projects with high quality. People’s livelihood projects are an important way to quickly enhance the sense of gain in people building the country together. We should strengthen the overall planning to create more cooperation results that will appeal to the people and benefit them directly.” Those words show an accurate grasp of the latest international situation and development trends, and define the policy guidelines for future major projects of the BRI.

Major projects serve as a diplomatic symbol.

Major projects, due to their political and policy characteristics, also have diplomatic symbolism, and whether a major project is implemented smoothly can be considered as a barometer of bilateral or multilateral diplomatic relations. For example, the renegotiation of the ECRL project between China and Malaysia in 2019 was an issue not only on project cooperation but also on diplomatic relations with the new government. In the light of the prominent significance of major projects, the personal presence of bilateral leaders on important occasions such as project cooperation signing ceremonies, groundbreaking ceremonies, and inauguration ceremonies can show, to some extent, that major projects are important outcomes of bilateral diplomatic relations. For another example, Serbian President Vucic and Prime Minister Brnabic, and Hungarian Prime Minister Orban attended the inauguration ceremony of the Belgrade-Novi Sad Section of the Belgrade-Budapest Railway in Serbia on March 19, 2022, which is the first order in Europe of China Railway’s “Go Global” Strategy and a key project of the BRI. Serbia’s high-level attention to the inauguration ceremony against the current international landscape reflects the solid diplomatic relations between the two countries. However, dynamic changes in diplomatic relations inevitably bring risks and costs to major projects, and affected by ideology, the binding between Chinese enterprises and projects “going global” and government image also brings uncertainty and risk to the implementation of major projects.

The major projects of the BRI have a richer symbolic meaning in public diplomacy besides the meaning in traditional government-to-government diplomacy. Since the major projects of the BRI are global ones, the participants and stakeholders face many challenges on regulation, norm and cultural awareness, thus forming specific “organizational fields”. There are significant challenges on the localization of the participants and the integration of different institutional systems, imposing a fundamental impact on smooth implementation and business sustainable development of the projects. In the event of a negative incident, the projects could become the focus of a hype or smear campaign by adversaries, making them the focus of global political opinion. For example, despite the best efforts made by China in terms of diplomacy, the Myitsone Hydropower Project between China and Myanmar, which can be called the “Three Gorges Dam Overseas”, had to be halted due to a combination of public opposition, internal political confrontation in Myanmar, media misinformation, and involvement of other countries, and remains unresolved to this day, highlighting the complexity of major international projects in terms of public relations and diplomatic relations. Therefore, to ensure the smooth implementation of the major projects of the BRI, it is necessary to break through the management philosophies for major projects “in China” and the traditional approach to external relations in “going global” by relying solely on government-to-government diplomacy, further enrich the new connotations of “major project diplomacy”, and create a new model with Chinese characteristics to govern stakeholders and handle public relations in the major international projects of “government-enterprise” type.

As the external environment along the Belt and Road becomes increasingly complex, the investment, construction and operation of major projects increasingly involve multilateral cooperation, and major projects become more closely and sensitively related to government-to-government diplomacy and enterprises’ public diplomacy, which is an increasing challenge for Chinese enterprises to “go global”. Therefore, under the new circumstances, diplomacy of major projects, an extension of corporate diplomacy in the project context, is integrated with government-to-government diplomacy and non-governmental public diplomacy, with the focus on supporting major project implementation, project performance, multinational image, and business sustainable development through public relations governance, thus building a favorable external environment for major projects. For example, during the construction of the Papalanto Power Plant in Nigeria, Project Manager Fang Yibo of SEPCOIII Electric Power Construction Co., Ltd. actively resolved project-related difficulties, broke down barriers to the relationships with local people and won respect and love, and was even made a tribal chief, which became a fascinating episode in cooperation between China and Nigeria. Now China and Nigeria still maintain good partnership in project construction and others, and diplomacy of major projects has played a great supporting role.

Major projects, sought after by countries, local governments, and institutions, are increasingly large in scale, and have become a complex management system, deeply integrated into external political, economic and social systems. In the past, we often talked about major projects from the perspective of engineering infrastructure or project management, while ignoring its external systems, such as social, political and public administration, which apparently caused a misunderstanding of major project management. China, a major power of major projects, has made great achievements that amaze the world in the area of major projects, however, China is still not a great power of major projects because it has mainly shown the experience with major projects “in China” and “hard power” in construction technology in past projects and does not have enough “soft power” in the world for managing the major projects of the BRI, which we need to pay sufficient attention to.