Abstract
Building on the tradition, promises, and advances brought by the historical Silk Road, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), launched by the Chinese government in 2013, has a profound impact on international business and the established forms of international collaboration. Exploiting the advantages of liberalization of trade in goods, services, capital, and public procurement, BRI will benefit the Chinese economy. At the same time, it will prompt substantial changes in the field of international business, e.g., by means of fostering business to business (B2B) and peer to peer (P2P) collaboration. It will also influence patterns of Outward Foreign Direct Investment (OFDI). Geography plays a role in BRI; geopolitics is also in the cards. Given the profound implications BRI is likely to generate in the fields of businesses, economy, society, and politics, it is imperative to frame and streamline the discussion to identify the key mechanisms and causal relationships that it induces. This is precisely what this Special Issue sought to do.