In the dynamics of East Asia international tiers, the Pacific vector prevailed, until a series of recent setbacks shifted the attention to Eurasia. The most important milestone in this regard was the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) announced by China in 2013. Scientific literature analysis shows that the issues of BRI are attracting growing attention in academia. The search of Econlit and Web of Sciences databases returns more than 500 hits on this topic. About 95% of the works are published in the period after 2016 in English. A semantic search in this pool of literature allows us to determine the following most common lines of research: the relationship between BRI and development, the economic aspects of the BRI’s implementation, the role of government policies, and the issues of international trade, finances and labour migration. A qualitative and quantitative review shows that BRI is generally positively perceived in the academic community. The reason for this is considered to be that an appropriate balan