Poland- BRI 2024.nvpx
The paper analyzes the official cognition of Poland in respect to China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), using the content analysis approach in order to underline hidden cognition, narratives, and their evolution in time in the context of U.S.-China competition. Against this background, this research tries to fill a serious gap in the literature by providing a systematic and in-depth content analysis of Poland’s official position on the BRI. By building a corpus of official government documents, reports, and media statements, this study applies a mixture of qualitative and quantitative methods, including corpus content analysis, word frequency analysis, and cognitive frame analysis, among others. The evidence produced in the paper clearly demonstrates that the main axis for the Polish predominantly optimistic cognition of BRI refers to questions of economic and infrastructural opportunities, while gaining more geopolitical caution driven both by the U.S.-China competition and regional security dynamics. It is indicative of the ability of Poland to balance economic growth with national strategic objectives and helps shed light on broader challenges and opportunities at the intersection of global trade and strategic competition. The contribution of this paper thus provides important lessons that can be learned in understanding how medium-sized geopolitical actors navigate global power dynamics.