Old roads, new horizons: China and the Belt and Road Initiative

If there is one phenomenon that has drawn the attention of academics, analysts and specialised media so far this century, it has surely been the rise of China and its potential to transform the world as we know it. Nobody can deny that there is no shortage of arguments to describe the unstoppable rise of the Asian country as the process with the greatest capacity to transform the contemporary world. On the basis of a dynamic economy that is clearly on the rise and of greater political and diplomatic assertiveness, China is now a leading player on the international stage, with an increasingly loud voice, and its presence has shaken not only the international scene, but also the field of International Relations, which is increasingly concerned with analysing what role the new power will play. Such analyses, though, are often accompanied by vague ideas about the potential for such change, about China’s effective ability to influence the international sphere and, above all, about what kind of world China aspires to build.

China’s strategic aspirations and objectives are the cornerstone of the macro-project launched in 2013 by President Xi Jinping, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), commonly known as the “New Silk Road”. The project has since gained the support of 140 countries, albeit not without tensions. The US has clearly opposed these plans and, at the EU level, European institutions have been at best cautious about Beijing’s intentions, describing China as an economic competitor and a systemic rival. Despite this, some European partners, most notably Italy, have embraced the Chinese project even if it generates misgivings in Brussels, Paris and Berlin.

China and the multilateralist discourse

Undoubtedly, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is one of the central instruments of China’s global strategy as it exemplifies its defining characteristics on the international stage. First, it stands out for the mobilisation of financial resources, with an estimated investment of more than one trillion dollars through the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank alone (and excluding the participation of other Chinese public banks) [1]1 — Chatzky, A. and McBride, J. (2020) China’s Massive Belt and Road Initiative. Council of Foreign Relations. Available online. . This by itself makes China a power with an enormous capacity to mobilise resources and economic stimuli, akin to the US with the Marshall Plan in the aftermath of World War II.

Second, it reinforces the “win-win” discourse that the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has touted in order to dispel any fears of China’s impressive economic potential. While the project seeks to place China at the world’s economic centre, its global nature and the flow of capital and projects it brings with it is potentially of interest to Asian, African and even European countries. In this respect, the efforts of the current Xi administration to underline not only the peaceful nature of the rise, but its commitment to multilateral processes of international governance and international stability have been remarkable and frequently reiterated, especially in the wake of Donald Trump’s rise to power in the US [2]2 — Nordin, A. H. and Weissmann, M. (2018) Will Trump make China great again? The belt and road initiative and international order. International Affairs 94 (2): 231-249. . In 2017, only three days before the inauguration of the now former US president, Xi Jinping addressed the Davos Forum with a speech that was an unambiguous defence of globalisation and economic openness in times of protectionist turbulence. Four years later, and less than a week after Democrat Joe Biden took the helm in the US, Xi returned to Davos to insist on the need to deepen multilateralism and global cooperation to deal with the pandemic and its consequences. And, in a clear warning to the US administration, he noted: “we have been shown time and again that to beggar thy neighbour, to go it alone and to slip into arrogant isolation will always fail”.

Old roads, new targets

The BRI revives the ancient Silk Road as a tool for globalising and connecting societies. More than 2,000 years ago, this route served as a connection between the Chinese Empire, one of the biggest and the longest-running empire in history, with Europe and Asia through different routes that crossed Central Asia, the Middle East and Europe. The Silk Road was not only a proto-project of connectivity, but also a diplomatic, social and cultural communication route that, until its decline in the 15th century, articulated exchanges between East and West.

In line with this ancient route, Xi Jinping, China’s longest-serving president since Mao Zedong, announced only six months after taking office the recreation of this project as an avenue for development, cooperation and economic growth in Eurasia. The aim of the BRI is to invite partners to participate in a macro network of economic, political, cultural and security relations, with China at its centre. The nature of the project is clearly sinocentric, and it is no coincidence that the new route is marked for completion in 2049, as this year coincides with the centenary of the establishment of the People’s Republic of China by Mao.

However, the BRI is not only based on reminiscences of a glorious past, but also addresses the huge infrastructure deficit in the Asian region. In 2017, the Asian Development Bank noted that the region suffers from an economic infrastructure financing gap of at least $800 billion. By improving Eurasian connections, the macro-project aims to strengthen cooperation and trade, connecting China’s main industrial and financial centres with Asia, the Middle East and Africa, and eventually Europe. The BRI’s enormous potential is also an opportunity to take advantage of the overcapacity of several Chinese industries, such as construction and building materials, key drivers of China’s robust economy, as well as a stable and growing channel for the internationalisation of the powerful public banking industry and, fundamentally, of the Chinese currency, the renminbi.

Furthermore, this multiplication of infrastructures and communication routes will help to strengthen the options for energy resources to enter China, opening up alternatives to disputed or extremely fragile areas, such as the Straits of Hormuz and Malacca. In fact, the aim is not only to establish more efficient, faster and less costly trade routes to strengthen the opening of the Chinese market at the international level, but also to diversify the routes for the passage of energy resources from producer and transit states, in order to avoid not only strategically fragile routes, but also, as far as possible, Russian territory. It is precisely the strategic interests that are of greatest concern to the international powers, which are wary of the project’s expansion and are preparing alternative plans.

One belt, one road

Under the shared umbrella of the BRI, two main strategies can be distinguished: the overland route (also known as the economic belt) and the maritime road, both running from China to Asian and European cities. The overland route builds on existing international transport routes and hub cities in order to stimulate trade and cooperation through improved infrastructure, simplified administrative processes and a gradual reduction of customs and tariffs towards free trade. To this end, a plan is drawn up to reinforce these new road and rail routes with gas, oil and energy pipelines and power plants connecting China’s far west with Central Asia, Moscow, Rotterdam and Venice, via key energy hubs such as Kazakhstan, Pakistan and Iran. To complement this, 50 free-market oriented special economic zones are envisaged, along the lines of those established in China since the 1970s under Deng Xiaoping, which ultimately proved key to its impressive economic development.

The maritime road, on the other hand, is an obvious counterpoint to the land route, complementing it with a strong commitment to the construction and modernisation of coastal infrastructures that connect China with Southeast Asia, the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean [3]3 — Callahan, W. A. (2016) China’s Belt and Road Initiative and the New Eurasian Order, Norwegian Institute for International Affairs, Policy Brief 22. . This maritime potential creates synergies with land connectivity, stimulating communication between the two routes through corridors to roadways, dry ports and airports.

The project’s parallel overland and maritime routes is a response to China’s own geography. On the one hand, it connects China’s coastal provinces, which are leading industrial and commercial centres, with safe and agile international ports under Chinese control. On the other hand, it opens up inland, less economically developed provinces –with problems of excessive migration to coastal urban areas, ethnic tensions and instability– to the sea through a network of corridors reaching the Indian Ocean, the Caspian Sea, the Middle East and Europe.

The Chinese String of Pearls

In response to its growing commercial interests, China opened the 21st century with an intense strategy of cooperation in the Indian and Pacific coastal regions, with agreements for the construction of new ports and the participation of Chinese companies in the management of some existing ports, as well as an agreement with Djibouti to establish the first Chinese military base abroad in 2017. Ten years earlier, analysts were already pointing to China’s intentions to create a line of containment to confront, on the one hand, the US presence, with important allies in the area and, moreover, with key naval bases such as Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean and Guam in the Pacific, in addition to those established in South Korea and Japan, and, on the other, the potential expansionist interests of the emerging India. US strategists and researchers coined the concept of the Chinese String of Pearls, which sought to describe a geopolitical strategy aimed at intensifying China’s presence in these waters through trade relations and the management of ports that, according to the most alarmist voices, have the potential to become military bases for the Chinese navy.

Despite repeated assurances from the CCP government, both the US and India have looked askance at China’s every move. Indeed, India has pushed its own counter-strategy through the “Act East Policy”, which since 2014 has sought to promote economic, strategic and cultural relations with the Asia-Pacific and has led it, for example, to try to break the Chinese String of Pearls by managing the Iranian port of Chabahar, a mere 140 kilometres from the Pakistani port of Gwadar, the crowning jewel of China’s strategy. In recent years, India has intensified its maritime cooperation with the US, Japan, Vietnam, Australia and the Philippines and has emulated Chinese rhetoric with the Mausam project and the Cotton Road, the former aimed at reinforcing the maritime connections between India and the Arabian Peninsula and the latter an obvious allusion to the ancient cotton trade routes.

However, India’s proactivity in the region has suffered a major setback following the approval of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) last October, the world’s largest free trade area, involving 15 Asian economies, including four of the continent’s top five, with India being the only one absent. While Indonesia was the main promoter of the project, the international community has hailed it as a clear triumph of Chinese diplomacy, as the tariff reduction and bureaucratic simplification will surely spur the connections that the RCEP already envisages.

The economic corridor with Pakistan, a key element

However, maritime projection is not the only issue of concern for India. Neighbouring Pakistan, India’s antagonist, is a hinge country between the BRI (the overland route) and the Maritime Silk Road through the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor, one of the six that make up the overland route of the BRI [5]5 — Deepak, B. R. (ed.) (2018) China’s Global Rebalancing and the New Silk Road. Singapur: Springer. . Indeed, it is on Pakistani territory that the Belt and Road meet and, according to official figures, the country will host China’s largest overseas investment project at $46 billion, including the aforementioned Gwadar port and major rail transport lines between the port, the airport and the Havelian railway terminal.

This route, in addition to allowing goods and energy resources to bypass the Malacca Straits, will save costs and time. However, the prospects for the corridor are complex. Its transit through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir outrages India, and its arrival in the Xinjiang region, already in Chinese territory, also calls into question the viability of the plan, given the region’s pro-independence movement and frequent allegations of human rights violations against the Uighur Muslim minority that inhabit the area, which turn the autonomous region into a potential volcano.

Central Asia, from forgotten scene to potential protagonist

However, China has diversified its potential dependence on this ally through two other corridors. The first one, the Eurasia Land Bridge Economic Corridor, links China with key cities such as Rotterdam, London, Venice and Madrid. In the case of the Spanish capital, the corridor includes the longest commercial railway route in the world, spanning the 13,000 kilometres that separate the Chinese city of Yiwu, where the world’s largest wholesale market is located, with Madrid. During the pandemic, this corridor has played a significant role as a major shipping channel for health products within the framework of the so-called “mask diplomacy”, also known as the Health Silk Road [7]7 — Verma, Raj (2020) China’s ‘mask diplomacy’ to change the COVID-19 narrative in Europe. Asia Europe Journal 18: 205-209; Cao J. (2020) Toward a Health Silk Road. China’s Proposal for Global Health Cooperation. China Quarterly of International Strategic Studies 6 (1): 19-35. .

The second corridor, the China–Central Asia–West Asia corridor, connects China with key hydrocarbon-producing areas, such as the Persian Gulf and the Caspian Sea, through Iran and several Central Asian countries, mainly Kazakhstan. The latter is particularly important, not only because of its production capacity, but also because of its participation in both corridors and its proximity to Moscow. The active participation of the Central Asian countries suggests an optimistic scenario in the region, with significant growth potential, especially as it is a region that has been forgotten by Europe and the US and is increasingly less subordinate to Russia’s influence, which opens the door to a stable and growing Chinese presence.

As the arteries of the BRI show, the weaving of novel, diversified and resilient cooperative processes has been an intrinsic characteristic of the project since its inception. Not surprisingly, China is aware of the challenges that it may have to face in the next 30 years and seeks to multiply and optimise its options. While there are significant misgivings about the project among powers satisfied with the current international order, the BRI is both a demonstration and a test of China’s reformist ambitions, which are still under-represented in organisations and processes within the international liberal order. In this context, the BRI also provides a stage where China can display its leadership model to increase its status and gain international legitimacy. China’s path towards the middle of the century, aimed at building what President Xi Jinping has dubbed the Community of Shared Future for Humanity, will be the answer to the main question internationalists are asking today: what values, principles and institutions will prevail in the international society of the future?

• References

  1 —

  Chatzky, A. and McBride, J. (2020) China’s Massive Belt and Road Initiative. Council of Foreign Relations. Available online.

  2 —

  Nordin, A. H. and Weissmann, M. (2018) Will Trump make China great again? The belt and road initiative and international order. International Affairs 94 (2): 231-249.

  3 —

  Callahan, W. A. (2016) China’s Belt and Road Initiative and the New Eurasian Order, Norwegian Institute for International Affairs, Policy Brief 22.

  4 —

  Hornat, J. (2016) The power triangle in the Indian Ocean: China, India and the United States. Cambridge Review of International Affairs 29 (2): 425-443.

  5 —

  Deepak, B. R. (ed.) (2018) China’s Global Rebalancing and the New Silk Road. Singapur: Springer.

  6 —

  Chung, C. P. (2017) What are the strategic and economic implications for South Asia of China’s Maritime Silk Road initiative?. The Pacific Review 31 (3): 315-332.

  7 —

  Verma, Raj (2020) China’s ‘mask diplomacy’ to change the COVID-19 narrative in Europe. Asia Europe Journal 18: 205-209; Cao J. (2020) Toward a Health Silk Road. China’s Proposal for Global Health Cooperation. China Quarterly of International Strategic Studies 6 (1): 19-35.