Abstract
China’s debt trap diplomacy has been debated among academia, think tanks, and the policymaking community. Unlike previous research, which mainly focuses on China’s lending practice and strategic intentions, this study looks at the measurement of this narrative and its relations with the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the China threat narratives. In particular, based on Google Trends search results from 1 February 2018 to 7 November 2021, this study creatively created weekly time series data to measure the narratives. Based on an autoregressive distributed lag model, this study finds that the BRI narrative and the China threat narrative make significant contributions to the debt trap diplomacy narrative. Results based on sub-datasets show that these significant relations are mainly driven by the English-speaking Indian public and that these relations are insignificant in the United States. This study contributes to the literature on China’s debt trap diplomacy by bringing solid empirical evidence and to academia as well in methods by presenting a (still) new quantitative approach to international relations.
Acknowledgments
The author would like to thank anonymous referees for helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper. All errors are the author’s sole responsibility.
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Research funding: This research received no specific grant from any funding agency, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.
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Competing interests: The authors report there are no competing interests to declare.
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Data availability statement: The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
Appendix 1: Comparison of Key Phrases

Appendix 2: Granger Causality Tests
Correlation does not necessarily mean causation. Granger (1969) used a method to determine how much of the present y can be explained by past values of y, and then whether including lagged values of x can improve the explanation’s accuracy. The Granger causality test answers the crucial question of whether x aids in the prediction of y. Because both variables are time series data, they must be examined for stationarity. Augmented Dickey-Fuller tests (not reported, but available upon request) show that both variables are stationary. Table A shows the results of the Granger causality tests.
Granger causality tests – DTD versus BRI. DTD represents the normalized volume of the debt trap diplomacy narrative worldwide. BRI is the normalized volume of the BRI narrative worldwide. Time period: 4 February 2018 – 7 November 2021. Frequency of data: weekly. Obs: 192–197.
| Null hypothesis | Lag order 1 | Lag order 2 | Lag order 3 | Lag order 4 | Lag order 5 | Lag order 6 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DTD does not Granger cause BRI | 15.2% | 10.4% | 19.6% | 34.6% | 56.3% | 30.6% |
| BRI does not Granger cause DTD | 39.2% | 3.2% | 3.4% | 4.1% | 4.7% | 7.9% |
Table A shows that there are unidirectional relations between DTD and BRI. The null hypothesis that DTD does not cause BRI cannot be rejected at a 10 percent confidence level. It means that BRI is not endogenous. However, Table A shows that the null hypothesis that BRI does not cause DTD is rejected at lag orders 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. It means that the BRI narrative worldwide has higher precedence and significantly contributes to the information content used to formulate the debt trap diplomacy narrative worldwide. If a different keyword such as “belt and road initiative” was used in a Google Trends search, the results would remain statistically unchanged (not reported but available upon request).
Table B shows that there are bidirectional relations between the debt trap diplomacy narrative and the China threat narrative. However, the debt trap diplomacy narrative can only cause the China threat narrative at lag orders 2 and 5. It is unlikely that these significant relations exist at zero lag order. At the same time, as expected, the China threat narrative significantly contributes to the information content used to formulate the debt trap diplomacy narrative worldwide.
Granger causality tests – DTD versus CT. DTD represents the normalized volume of the debt trap diplomacy narrative worldwide. CT is the normalized volume of the China threat narrative worldwide. Time period: 4 February 2018 – 7 November 2021. Frequency of data: weekly. Obs: 192–197.
| Null hypothesis | Lag order 1 | Lag order 2 | Lag order 3 | Lag order 4 | Lag order 5 | Lag order 6 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DTD does not Granger cause CT | 24.3% | 7.6% | 25.1% | 34.6% | 5.2% | 12.0% |
| CT does not Granger cause DTD | 4.0% | 0.5% | 2.7% | 4.7% | 0.4% | 0.7% |
Appendix 3: ARDL Bounds Test
Included observations: 192.
| Test statistic | Value | k |
|---|---|---|
| F-statistic | 12.45 | 2 |
| Critical value bounds | ||
| Significance | I(0) bound | I(1) bound |
| 10% | 3.17 | 4.14 |
| 5% | 3.79 | 4.85 |
| 2.5% | 4.41 | 5.52 |
| 1% | 5.15 | 6.36 |
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Note: The ARDL bounds testing approach was developed by Pesaran, Shin, and Smith (2001) to test the presence of a long-run relationship between variables. The null hypothesis is that no long-run relationships exist. The critical values are provided for significance levels of 10%, 5%, 2.5%, and 1%, respectively.
Appendix 4: Variance Inflation Factors (VIF)
| Variable | VIF |
|---|---|
| DTD(−1) | 1.320 |
| DTD(−2) | 1.305 |
| BRI | 1.103 |
| CT | 1.096 |
| C | 1.114 |
Appendix 5: Residual Tests

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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Articles
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- The Chinese Debt Trap Diplomacy Narrative: An Empirical Analysis
- A Social Constructionist Approach to Institutional Change: The Case of the Romanian Competition Council
- Conscription Reloaded? The Debate About Compulsory Service in Germany in 2022 and the Peoples’ Attitudes Towards It
- Always a Bridesmaid: A Machine Learning Approach to Minor Party Identity in Multi-Party Systems
- Commentary and Responses
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