Question: How would you assess China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and how do you see it evolving in the coming years? – Part 1
Horia Ciurtin
So far, the evolution of the BRI tells a rather prosaic story: a highway here, a railway there, a port terminal (almost) everywhere. Rather than offering a continuum of structurally integrated development clusters under the teleological aegis of an identifiable geoeconomic design, BRI thinly spreads a patchwork of different circumstantial projects across Eurasia. Indeed, in certain regions, the initiative fared much better than in others for reasons that pertain not only to China’s own (business) offer, but also to larger strategic and political calculations of the partners involved. At the same time, in other areas, despite coming laden with ‘gifts’, Beijing merely received a polite nod, a shrug and then silence. Political dynamics – be them local or international – often trumped what might have seemed a decent bargain, leaving China out in the cold or manifesting outright opposition.
Irrespective of this geographically asymmetric rate of success, China clearly benefited from a relatively stable Eurasia, despite episodic turmoil and endemic conflicts. Supply chains and international commerce remained a global affair, with Beijing in a central position and integrated with precious consumer markets in the EU and the USA. However, after the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, the integrity and consistency of the global trade system is at stake. And BRI itself is at a crossroads. One that shall determine China’s place in the world, not as planned in a CCP Plenary, but as forged in the crucible of a rearranging international system. And in such a context, Russia is slowly becoming a stumbling block for BRI ambitions and desired – benevolent – footprint in the global agora. Given the all-encompassing Western sanctions upon Russia and Belarus (ever increasing in scope and intensity), that specific BRI land route will be far from suitable in becoming a major corridor for Chinese goods. Thus, nolens volens, all the possible alternatives for a terrestrial route depend upon ensuring that Turkey plays along and is interested in serving as a gateway to Europe. In the coming years, we are to expect increased attention from Beijing towards Ankara and enhanced goodwill (financial) gestures during Turkey’s present economic meltdown. Paradoxically for those who forgot that the waters of the Bosphorus are the point where Europe and Asia truly meet, BRI’s future might be more indebted to Ankara than Moscow.
Horia Ciurtin serves as an independent consultant in the field of international investment law & political risk. He is an Associate Expert at the New Strategy Center (Bucharest, Romania), a Research Fellow for the European Federation for Investment Law and Arbitration (Brussels, Belgium), and External PhD Researcher at the Amsterdam Center for International Law (Amsterdam, Netherlands). Moreover, in the field of international commercial arbitration, he features on the list of arbitrators of the CAA International Arbitration Centre (CAAI) – Hong Kong branch.
Du Yufei
In Southeast Asia, a major challenge has been vetting the quality and authenticity of BRI projects among so many “Chinese” businesses. A few dubious private Chinese companies in Southeast Asia promote themselves as BRI projects, but in reality, they simply “挂羊头卖狗肉” (hang a goat head but sell dog meat) and “拉大旗作虎皮” (wave a banner as if it were tiger skin) to trick and scare others. They claim to be “BRI practitioners” but in fact are engaged in drug dealing, human trafficking, online gambling and scamming, none of which remotely serves the BRI mission or Chinese State interests. Tactics commonly employed by deep-fake BRI projects include: subcontracting construction to Chinese SOEs; joining or establishing overseas Chinese organizations and using those titles to meet Chinese diplomats at embassies or United Front officials in PRC. Once they obtain a few official-looking photos or appear in Chinese State media with a liberally used “BRI” label, these companies disseminate the photos on the internet to gain an aura of officialness. These fake images may grant them valuable access to local politicians eager to benefit from China’s BRI and it can also confuse others who think they have “deep” Chinese State connections.
As China’s neighbor and largest trading partner, ASEAN is where President Xi Jinping first announced the maritime “road” of BRI and is home to a myriad of “Chinese” companies. The local Chinese diasporic business of the so-called “bamboo network” accounts for a significant share of the private sectors in many ASEAN nations. Taiwanese and Hong Kong firms were present decades before mainland Chinese companies — both state and private — entered the region. Mainland Chinese companies have since seen their footprints grow rapidly and their capital is ubiquitous in many local and transnational companies. However, BRI should be a club, not a marketplace. A marketplace is open to all; a club, however, should select its members carefully. China must consolidate its BRI projects and be more exclusive in identifying those projects that maintain and bolster the BRI brand. Otherwise, it may suffer reputational loss along with those companies that engage in controversial, sometimes illegal, activities. It can start by publishing an official list of BRI projects and clarifying those that are not.
Du Yufei is a HKPFS Ph.D. candidate at City University of Hong Kong. He studies migration politics with a focus on recent Chinese migration to Hong Kong and Mainland Southeast Asia. He holds a B.A. summa cum laude from Tufts University and was a Princeton in Asia fellow from 2015 to 2017.
Mohammadbagher Forough
The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is best understood as a discursive umbrella term which subsumes under it a host of economic, infrastructural, political, technical, cultural, trade, and investment foreign policy agendas that were well under way before 2013 when the BRI was introduced. With the BRI, all those policy agendas became a coherent and comprehensive strategy. In the next five years, the BRI is likely to undergo various transformations. In terms of geography, the BRI’s rail connectivity to the rich Western European markets is going to face serious difficulties due to the war in Europe. China has to abandon the Eurasian Land Bridge, which means avoiding rail connectivity to Europe through Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. This means 17+1 as a component of the BRI will suffer major setbacks. China will rely further on maritime routes and for land/rail connectivity to Europe, China will increasingly depend upon BRI’s Central Asia-West Asia (CAWA) Corridor and the Turkish Middle Corridor. Furthermore, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor will be developed with increased intensity and will likely be synergized with CAWA and Middle Corridor.
BRI planners will pay much more attention to (South) East Asian, Middle Eastern, and African components of the BRI geography, as these three regions are arguably the most receptive to China’s rise. Thanks to Western sanctions, Russia will increasingly become an integral ‘part’, rather than ‘partner’, of China. The Eurasian Economic Union (led by Russia) will also be increasingly synergized with, perhaps partially integrated into, China’s BRI. China and Russia will combine their forces in developments pertaining to the Northern Sea Route and the Arctic region, while The West’s geoeconomic initiatives such as the EU’s Global Gateway, the US-led Build Back Better World, and Japan’s Quality Infrastructure Initiative will increasingly be synergized to compete with China’s BRI in Afro-EurAsia. Due to the global turmoil, China will spend a considerable portion of its surplus capital at home as a safe investment bet to promote growth. In fact, Xi Jinping already announced an ‘all-out’ domestic infrastructure investment push to boost growth in late-April 2022. Finally, another major strategic shift, which is already occurring, is the increasing development of the so-called Green Silk Road. Renewables will become more and more prominent in Chinese thinking going forward, and arguably China is already a green superpower.
Dr. Mohammadbagher Forough is a research fellow at the German Institute of Global and Area Studies (GIGA) in Hamburg, Germany, and a research associate at Clingendael – Netherlands Institute of International Relations in The Hague, Netherlands. He holds a Ph.D. in International Relations. Follow him on Twitter @Mohamad_Forough
Eugene Simonov
I perceived the “Vision for One Belt One Road” as complementary to China’s 2015 “Ecological Civilization Policy”, which promoted all-encompassing “greening” of the domestic economy, but accelerated migration of resource intensive and dirty industries overseas. BRI brought to targeted countries unsustainable large industrial infrastructure without enforceable environmental regulations. It promised comprehensive development schemes at continental scale, and environmentalists hoped it could incentivize and disseminate a global “ecological civilization.” In response, NGOs issued a “Green Silk Road Initiative Declaration” in 2016 calling for greater environmental safeguards, green development planning, public participation, and accountability mechanisms, and in 2017 the “Guidance on Green BRI” promised to take these issues into account. A corresponding “Plan for Green BRI” sought to kickstart everything from green supply chains to biodiversity corridors. Alas, “global environmental governance” has not progressed through the BRI, which lacked capacity to implement comprehensive development programs. It ultimately served as a “smokescreen” for different actors pursuing private interests, often resulting in biodiversity loss and suppression of local communities.
In response to mounting criticism from BRI-targeted countries and “western” bullying, China has reduced investment into the most criticized project types and promised to introduce project-level “safeguards” resembling those adopted by western institutions. However, a collective decision-making mechanism for “green BRI development” did not emerge. “Planning of green economic corridors” faded away and governments of BRI-targeted countries lack enthusiasm for the “export of ecological civilization.” So, the future viability of the BRI is in question and will be tested by how it reacts to crises. In contrast to recent COVID-diplomacy, China so far has not offered specific remedies to BRI-targeted countries threatened by energy and food shortages resulting from the Ukraine conflict. Domestically China has relaxed coal policies, hinting that key climate and environmental objectives may be sacrificed in times of crises. Moreover, geopolitical competition has forced BRI-rivals from the EU to Japan to formulate their own international infrastructure development initiatives focused on pouring more concrete over the Earth’s surface, albeit in an “inclusive manner” and using the best “ESG standards”. Therefore, unless the new Cold War reshapes the world, I anticipate further shrinking of the BRI, accompanied by greater compliance of remaining BRI projects with “international environmental standards,” but limited green innovation and environmental leadership, despite the enormous potential of China’s “ecological civilization” policy.
Eugene Simonov is an expert on environmental governance in transboundary river basins and serves as Coordinator for the Rivers without Boundaries International Coalition. He co-edited the pioneering expert review “Environmental Risks to Sino-Russian Cooperation” and was a key Russian expert in the development of the “Sino-Russian Strategy for Transboundary Protected Areas in the Amur River Basin”. Eugene is a PhD candidate at UNSW-Canberra and conducts research on the role of civil society in global and regional environmental governance.
Una Aleksandra Bērziņa-Čerenkova
Russia’s war in Ukraine is certainly an issue for the implementation of BRI. After Belarus proved to be an unstable partner in BRI’s Eastern European offshoot, China gave the central role to Ukraine, as Arseny Sivitsky has pointed out. However, the war is only BRI’s latest problem rather than a turning point for the Initiative — at least in Northern and Eastern Europe. Problems began shortly after BRI was announced in 2015. China chalked up previously existing projects to BRI, yet new successful developments didn’t follow. Possibly, the issue was the partners not being fully aware of each other’s needs, geopolitical mindsets, and histories. As a result, no real business interest and involvement followed the good will expressions of the political delegations. Later, the US factor came into play. After the US-China trade war started in 2018, the larger European countries remained relatively cooler and pragmatic in their dealings with China, whereas smaller European NATO members who had signed BRI memoranda with China in the previous years and whose security rests entirely on NATO, were keener to align closer to the American rather than European position and began taking extra precautions.
On top of the challenges according to business logic, the geopolitical logic also created constraints for BRI in the region. Notably, when Chinese investors approached the Klaipeda port in Lithuania with a proposal for a majority investment in deep-water port construction in 2019, Washington said no, and a veto from the Lithuanian minister of defense followed, marking the end of the early Lithuanian policy of attracting Chinese investment in transport infrastructure. The next blows to BRI were the mutual EU-PRC sanctions and the failure of the Comprehensive Agreement on Investment in early 2021. Europe acknowledged the risks of over-reliance on China — not fully buying into the US position but acknowledging some of the grievances it voiced were valid for European businesses as well. The European backing of Lithuania in the country’s spat with China followed in 2022. Certainly, the war in Ukraine makes the implementation of BRI projects in Northern and Eastern Europe even more unlikely, however, Beijing’s vision of transcontinental connectivity had already run into commercial, geopolitical and values problems before Russia’s attack, and will still have these problems blocking its path after the fog of war clears.
Dr. Una Aleksandra Bērziņa-Čerenkova is a political scientist and China scholar. She is Head of the Political Science PhD programme and the China Studies Centre at Riga Stradins University, as well as Head of the Asia program at the Latvian Institute of International Affairs. She has held a Senior visiting research scholar position at Fudan University School of Philosophy in Shanghai, and a Fulbright visiting scholar position at the Center for East Asia Studies, Stanford University.