President Xi Jinping, in his keynote speech that opened the two-day Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation in Beijing, did his best to explain the future of the New Silk Roads.
Xi said that the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) – that what was once “One Belt, One Road” (OBOR) – is a multilateral project set to bring “peace, harmony and happiness” across Eurasia by “strategically connecting” nations as diverse as Russia, Mongolia, Turkey and Vietnam through development plans that are already operational. And, he added, they will be a success because extra funds are already on their way.
Xi told his audience, that included Russian President Vladimir Putin, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte and a host of other world leaders and top ranking officials, that he had proposed an additional RMB 780 billion (approximately US$113 billion) to be disbursed through multiple sources.
These include the Silk Road Fund; the China Development Bank; the Export and Import Bank of China and also overseas capital provided by Chinese banks. The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) is not part – at least not yet – of this proposed package.
That’s still a long way towards fulfilling Asia’s gargantuan infrastructure needs – estimated to be at least $5 trillion up to 2022.
Economic logic certainly points to connectivity between Asia and Europe compressing as mutual trade multiplies. Italy and the UK are already enthusiastic supporters of OBOR/BRI. As too are Germany’s industrialists.
Significantly, before the summit, Xi was in a phone call with new French President Emmanuel Macron, who took power this Sunday. Xi not only offered the requisite support for EU integration; he encouraged Macron to buy into the New Silk Roads – which are not exactly understood in France’s business and media – as part of a unified EU strategy.
There’s no question that this massive attempt at infrastructure building – pipelines, ports, roads, high-speed rail, fiber-optic cables – that aims to unify Eurasia into a seamless trade emporium is the definitive 21st century geoeconomic/geopolitical project.
OBOR/BRI will configure Globalization Mark II, or which Xi in Davos defined as “inclusive globalization”.
Which is really the same as interpreting OBOR/BRI as “de-Americanized globalization”.
And OBOR/BRI will certainly act as an essential component of Xi’s Made in China 2025 strategy and the now central aspirational “Chinese Dream” concept. The initiative has become the trade/economic foreign policy arm of Xi’s drive to move China into the status of a “moderately affluent” society.
What Xi is aiming at during the Beijing summit is to address two key but controversial points. How China proposes to finance OBOR/BRI. And how to build a consensus that this is a Eurasia-wide “win-win” operation.
About that black or white cat
New Silk Road activity is already frantic. Take the China-Europe Railway Express for for instance. It spans 51 different rail links with freight trains already connecting 27 Chinese and 28 European cities. There’s also a planned rail line between China and Laos and a high-speed rail between Yunnan province in China and Thailand. In Malaysia there is Kuantan port industrial park and aluminium and palm oil processing. In Turkey three state-owned Chinese companies are turning the country’s third largest port, Kumport, into a key OBOR/BRI node.
Among all these myriad projects, arguably the most ambitious is the US$46 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). It’s a complex network of roads, rail, oil/gas pipelines, ports, airports and special economic zones linking Xinjiang to Gwadar port in Balochistan and is first New Silk Road project to get direct investment from the Silk Road Fund.
In November 2016, an upgraded and extended Karakoram highway linked this Arabian Sea port with the ancient Chinese silk road of Kashgar.
As Xi has stressed, China, beyond CPEC, will get even closer, geopolitically, to Pakistan under the framework of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).
Cue to India throwing tantrums – and then sending a low-level delegation to the Beijing summit.
That could be said to be counterproductive because China and India’s development strategies are not mutually exclusive. India is the second largest shareholder of the AIIB, after China and both China and India are equal partners in the New Development Bank (NDB) – the BRICS bank – which is not directly implicated in financing OBOR/BRI projects.
And most of all China and India are both members of the Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar Economic Corridor (BCIM-EC); that has the aim of – what else – economic development. BCIM-EC could either become a branch of OBOR/BRI or proceed as a stand-alone mechanism, with equal voice by all members.
So to upgrade Deng Xiaoping. “It doesn’t matter if the New Silk Road cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice”. And catching mice in the 21st century means Eurasia integration.
Low Shen-Cheang the logic is simplle.Tell chna not take what isn’t for them.We filipinos can live with the vast resources .minerals and oil in our own sovereign waters the West Philippine Sea whidh china try to rob us.Stop China’s TRANSGRESSION.China can buy iur present government but they can not buy the entire filipino poeple. Get-out,Back-off from west Philippine Sea and stop manipulating Philippine economy lie what China did to VENEZUELA.
The world cannot wait forever for India to join in this initiative. They want their children to have better lives in peace.
Dont know bout this obor/bri shit. Alls i wanna do is drive my truck from mindanao where am presently to d world cup in moscow in 2018. If i can do that and not b waylaid, and drive on non crappy roads, am gonna b forever thankful to d chinese n russians. (And not call em names bhind their backs. lol)
Yeh, even d arabs who backed this dollars wid oil are beginning to smell d desert winds beginning to blow east again and are changing sides. Merchant opportunists that they traditionally were.
Peter Nebres I think there is another branch of the true silk road that Iran is working out with China that will connect Afghanistan to China and central Asian republics to Indian ports. India is not stupid. I have also read here on ATimes that Pakistan has spent a lot of money on this project but has not been compensated by China.
Can the Arabs eat weapons?
Excellent article many thanks to the author. I believe the silk road project along with Shanghai Cooperation council are the death nails in the cofin of US/Britain and Israeli campaing of global terror to maintain the dollar supremacy.
Most, if not all, Europeans don’t want to serve the Saudi-Israel-US-Anglosphere "corridor". Mac Kinder must keep turning over in his tomb.
the Pax Americana was allways crafted with the umbrella of NGOs. And here is the key: Bill Clinton openly said for every one buck, we want one-thirty back… This was then done by errecting every where arround the planet militarry bases. How hypcritical is it then to complain about a few Chinese artificial islands?
Truly visionary. Good on ya China.
I think ur talking bout d americans. Lol
Anne Teoh indians have their heads up their asses rite now wid modi n all that hindu nationalism. Sad.
Don’t you Iike Chinese to permanently pretend to be nice to everyone and singing peace and harmony and dish out billion to its neighbors? Or you prefer to have more gun boats practicing in Asian water while the world gather in Beijing working out to build and develop harmonious new century.
Don’t trust Chna’s deceitful propaganda.Thry need the world more than the world needs them to feed their slave people.Stop the Economy manipulator and the TRANSGRESSOR in the disputed sea.
Luca Taramelli , I know. I’ve worked with Indians, and travelled India in the 70s. My point is, with an unwavering hope to bring peace to the world, we should always remember compassion, as well as justice, fariness and integrity. India, from the little I see and know so far, needs to pull up and do something and China and Pakistan can show India true friendship and integrity.
You are right Anne, but it seems Modi is a bit "confused", to say the least… He is behaving like most of India’s one pct: constant denial of reality
There’s an excellent video comparing the development going on in China and India, focused particularly on their trains, put together by some forward thinking Indian females and their male collague. India must not go back to the old days but move ahead and there should be efoorts made by Pakistan and India to talk and settle their difference. China should demand this before beginning joint ventures with either country – they need a trio to work out the main parts of the highway along the Karakoram shared by the three countries …
Yes, "mostly in defence"… Defence of what, Adolf ?
This ain’t nothing compared to the Saudi led US-Arab biz corridor on the works where USD 300 billion are already confirmed mostly in defense but also another 55 Muslim countries commitments to business with US worth more than USD 1 trillion
This is bigger and more ambitious than what d americans ever did in their 20th century pax americana. If i were them i would work to do d same in knitting north, central n south america. But we know what they did there. Wasted it.