Impact of the belt and road initiative on commercial maritime power

Since the Belt and Road (B&R) Initiative was launched in 2013, China's investment in ports across the globe has promoted maritime connectivity, driven performance in shipping, and strengthened its commercial maritime power. With the objective of quantitatively evaluating a country's commercial maritime power, we develop an evaluation system based on the literature and the analytic hierarchy process (AHP)-entropy method. We analyze the evolution of 32 countries’ commercial maritime power since the inception of the B&R Initiative. The main findings are as follows. First, our evaluation system of commercial maritime power consists of a hierarchy containing 4 components, 7 elements, and 32 factors. Second, the evolution of a country's commercial maritime power can be assessed. The results show that countries along the routes of the initiative show good performances in the evolution of commercial maritime power. Third, we find that Vietnam not China shows the highest average annual growth rate.