This paper reviews 482 SSCI English articles about the “Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)” with the bibliometric software Citespace. The visualization of country cooperation network and the geographical distribution of publications and funds demonstrate that international BRI studies are mainly carried out by countries along the routes of B&R (Belt and Road), with China, U.S.A., Australia, and the U.K. ranking as the top four in terms of research quantity and the number of international cooperation. Diachronically, the time-zone keyword display reveals the professionalization and reification of BRI research. The qualitative analysis of the top 40 high co-citation articles indicates three main research questions: the motivation of the initiative, the hegemony debate, and the potential opportunities and challenges. Besides, the Citespace keyword analysis proves the hypothesized correlation between the theme of the study and the national ideology of the author. Finally, suggestions for future study and further implementation of the initiative are given.
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