A Big Data Analysis of Perceived Image of the Belt and Road Initiative

The megatrend of rebalancing of global economic power from the West to the East has transformed the management of international business. Since 2017, the conflict and competition between two superpowers—the United States and China—in multiple arenas have intensified. The dramatic change in the United States foreign policy has turned China as a “strategic competitor” of America and framed the China’s Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) in a way that creates a negative perceived image and public sentiment in mass media. Despite the potential effect of public sentiment of the BRI on governments’ policy-making and international businesses’ investment decisions, empirical research surrounding this issue across time and space is inadequate. To address this gap, the current study examines how the global view of the BRI, as reflected by the public sentiment (or tone) expressed in media sources, has been changing over time. This study takes advantage of a big data approach and analyzes data of 344,190 BRI-relevant news articles from the Global Database of Events, Language, and Tone (GDELT) between 2017 and 2021. The results show that there is an overall positive tone at the global level and from China’s perspective, but a negative tone from the United States’ viewpoint. International businesses are advised to track and predict changes of perceived BRI image from the global and individual country’s perspectives and make necessary decisions to address the opportunities and challenges associated with public sentiment shaped by megatrends.