America’s Marshall Plan and China’s One Belt and One Road Initiative

Abstract

Existing research on the US Marshall Plan and China’s OBOR Initiative has tended to focus on national interests and relations with the countries involved in the projects, assuming the state or interstate relations as the unit of analysis and focusing on the background (or causes), process, and outcomes of the Marshall Plan and Belt and Road Initiative. In contrast to these approaches, this study aims to show the transnational elements (i.e., logics of the capitalist world-economy) of the Marshall Plan and OBOR that both projects have in common. This study also presents how both projects at least partially helped to revitalize and boost global capitalism beyond their own national interests. The theoretical contribution of this study is to show that the logic of global capitalism is part of what keeps the Marshall Plan and OBORs going.