“Grouping” or “Ride One’s Coattails”?—How Developing Countries along the Belt and Road Satisfy Themselves

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

1. Your title implies that governments (not "countries) follow either "grouping" or "ride one's coattails", but the reality is that most of them use both strategies to meet their national interests (not to "satisfy themselves". (lines 2-3_
2. Energy is not "the basis of economic development and growth" as you contend in your first sentence (l. 28).  Rather it is a critical factor in these processes, but many others are also critical, such as trade relations, access to natural resources, quality of the workforce, innovation, technology, and so forth.
3. The BRI would not "promote the adjustment of global energy production and consumption sides.." (l. 34-5), but could facilitate market flows of energy.
4. The Chinese "policy unsustainability" (l. 42) sure needs a cite and/or more explanation.
5. There is not "a lack of attention to the underdeveloped..." (l. 45), but rather insufficient attention to them.  Arguably.
6. l. 49, the figure 2000 needs to specify what currency (presumably USD?).  Note that all of these comments refer to your opening paragraph, which needs to be much more accurate and interesting to the reader.
7. l. 56 you highlight making "the global energy transition a global trend". Fair point, but your paper ignores an essential part of this trend, which is recognizing the climate change impacts of fossil fuel energy (the most traded) and ignores renewable energy (especially solar and wind) that is more often used to meet domestic needs. Ignoring renewable energy and the issue of climate change is a major oversight.
8. You then argue for an overall global system (l. 62), which surely is more accurately consider an evolving process rather than a goal (the latter assuming that it is reached and the problems are solved).
9. You then introduce a critical concept in your approach, that of embodied energy (l. 65) but without explaining it except by claiming that it is "a measurement tool" (l. 65) that is fundamental to your paper. Surely this is an evolving concept, and economists are considering how to measure the energy that goes into producing the food that provides the energy needed by the human labor force, the energy needs to address climate change problems, the energy required to mine the raw materials, support the computers required, and so on.  What evidence do you have that any of the 99 countries involved in the BRI have adopted the concept of embedded energy, or are even aware of it?
10. l. 70-71 is virtually repeated in l. 72-73. 
11. l. 88, your article does not "build an embodied energy flow network" between the BRI countries, but rather proposes one.  And one that few, if any, of the 99 governments seem likely to adopt. Might be interesting to academics, though.
12. l. 154, "this article chooses countries..."  Better to say that is includes or focuses on these 99 countries.  Then Table 1 (l. 176) lists 20 countries, including small island economies like Maldives and Jamaica with major economic powers like China, South Korea, and Russia, without demonstrating that they were compared with the other 79 countries. Later (l. 205), 22 are net exporters and the others are net importers, of which 12 import more than 90% of their total embodied energy flow, giving as examples Malaysia (with its vast oil palm industry and oil industry) and war-torn Afghanistan.  This escapes logic for a reader.
13. You then divided the 99 BRI countries into four associations (lines 212-225), led by Russia (with 32 countries), South Africa (29 countries), China and South Korea (25), and one without a leader (13 countries), but then says that they are highly overlapped.  It discusses whether they are recipients or contributors to the network, when surely almost all are both since trade is always two-way.  The reader is getting more confused.
14. l. 236 claims that this is "already a fully connected network", without indicating what this means and whether it actually applies; surely the vast major of the 99 countries also have trade relations outside the BRI (China with Japan and the USA is an obvious example).
15. You state that the BBV model "believes that if a new connection edge appears after a new node joins in the network", when the model assumes this (models don't believe, unless they are humans).  And nowhere do you clarify what is an "edge", and state clearly that a "node" is a joining country (right? if not, what is it?).  Assuming that the BBV model is the one you adopt, can you show that it really is "based on a realistic embodied flow network"?  What does "realistic" mean here?  A reader might assume that this means that the concept is widely accepted, and would expect more evidence that this is so.
16. The concept of "edge" is critical to your thesis. l. 281-283 will surely make the reader wonder about how realistic this is". "The weight of each edge is equal to their amount of embodied energy flow, and directionality is not considered. The initial point weight is equal to the sum of all edge weights connected to it."  Such a statement is difficult to accept when so many of the variables have not been defined.
17. Comparative advantage theory (l. 284) and geopolitics (l. 285) need some cites so that the reader is confident that these critical dimensions are being considered appropriately. Your statement that "geographical proximity has become an essential basis for national cooperation" flies in the face of both of these dimensions. Neighbors are often in conflict, and trading partners are often far away.  And it appears that you use such factors to distinguish strategies between "grouping" between developing countries and "ride one's coattails" by cooperating with developed countries (l. 296-300), when it is apparent that virtually all developing countries follow both strategies.  This throws your fundamental premise under a fairly dark cloud.
18. This makes the various mathematical formulas (l. 309, 317, 363, etc.) of dubious value, not helped by setting the growth coefficient at a random number (l. 334). Figures 6 and 7 were not comprehensible to this reader.
19. l. 446. "this paper" specifies initial nodes and randomly selects three countries.  No paper does this; it is the authors who make such judgements.  So at least admit this, for example by saying "In this paper, we specify the initial nodes based on random experiments, and randomly select three countries..."  You might wish to explain why you chose to be random rather than designed something that would be more non-random.
20. Nor does your paper "establish a model" (l. 466), but rather proposes or describes a model.  It won't be established until it is fairly widely adopted to guide national trade and development strategies.  Good luck with that.

Author Response

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Reviewer 2 Report

so many of the citations are from Chinese authors. this does not enhance the credibility of the article.

Author Response

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Reviewer 3 Report

I read an interesting and comprehensive research article entitled ‘“Grouping“ or “Ride One's Coattails”？- How Developing Countries along the Belt and Road Satisfy Themselves’. Authors put great efforts and it looks very informative and impressive. The concept of the article is interesting and suitable to publish in Energies Journal. Authors need to consider few comments to improve the quality of manuscript before its acceptance.

• Abstract looks very general authors should mention the importance of research work briefly.
• Provide a nice graphical abstract representing the overview of the MS with key highlights.
• Figure 3, 5 and 7 text size should be higher.

• For figure and table captions give all details which is quite expected. Don’t use any abbreviation.

• Techno Economic challenges of the developed system need to be addressed. What are the limitations and future research direction to use this methodology for practical application need to be described by adding a new section before conclusions.
• The conclusion of the study needs to add with the specific output obtained from the study, it could be modified with precise outcomes with a take home message. 
• Some English and grammar mistakes are present need to be correct to improve the quality of the manuscript.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx