China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) can generate soft power, but its reputational payoffs are conditional, not automatic. I argue that BRI projects produce ‘developmental soft power’ primarily when three conditions hold: credible delivery, fiscally prudent financing and local narrative co-ownership by domestic elites and media. A qualitative comparative analysis of Bangladesh and Pakistan shows divergent pathways. In Pakistan, where strategic ties and elite consensus long predate the BRI, China–Pakistan Economic Corridor amplifies an already durable pro-China orientation and buffers backlash. In Bangladesh, visible infrastructure gains improve China’s image, but debt concerns and India-linked counter-narratives constrain reputational returns. These findings extend Nye’s attraction framework by specifying development performance as a distinct mechanism of soft power and by identifying the political and narrative conditions under which infrastructure translates into legitimacy abroad.
Md. Obaidullah (Wed,) studied this question.