The New Silk Roads, formerly One Belt One Road, then Belt and Road Initiative, were launched almost five years ago by President Xi Jinping, first in Astana (the Silk Road Economic Belt) and then in Jakarta (the Maritime Silk Road).
Way beyond the acronym purgatory – and the “lost in translation” factor that neither name sounds sexy in English – the fact is BRI will remain the organizing master concept of Chinese foreign policy for the foreseeable future, all the way to 2049 (the 100th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China).
It took Washington – under the Obama and Trump administrations – almost five years to come up with a response to BRI. And that is now essentially a trade war.
The response increasingly surfs a tsunami of Sinophobia dragging a detritus of malaise: corruption, pollution, real estate bubbles, ghost cities, and last but not least, a “road to nowhere” scheme (just like the BRICS emerging economies and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank) relentlessly portrayed as an evil “scheme” destined to condemn unsuspecting poor countries to an endless debt trap and culminating in the takeover of their resources.
The Belt and Road is, additionally, dismissed as just a scheme to bypass the Strait of Malacca, through which transits 75% of Chinese exports and 80% of energy imports. In reality that happens to be only one among myriad vectors of the scheme.
The BRI hotel check-out policy
Let’s contrast BRI-bashing with three different dossiers: Malaysia, Sri Lanka and Pakistan.
The move by Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad to suspend BRI-related projects – the $20-billion East Coast Rail Link and two pipelines worth over $2 billion – does not mean they are canceled. This is an economic recalculation.
Malaysia may be virtually bankrupt because of the Najib kleptocracy, but that has nothing to do with BRI. Mahathir, in fact, made it clear he wants to strengthen the partnership with China, and he’s in favor of the initiative. But first, he needs to balance the national budget. Kuala Lumpur will eventually be back in BRI mode.
The same applies to one of BRI’s key connectivity projects, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). New Prime Minister Imran Khan is bent on renegotiating some of its terms. Once again, that relates to bad management by the previous Sharif administration and the notorious corruption of the tax-evading Pakistani elite.
Then there’s the case of the Sri Lankan port of Hambantota. Last December, the port – financed by Chinese investment – was transferred to Middle Kingdom control on a 99-year lease. This has nothing to do with a Chinese takeover, or some mischievous variant of gunboat diplomacy. It is mostly about corruption and bad management inside Sri Lanka’s previous government.
Some of the 60-65 nations participating in the BRI scheme are in fact curtailing Chinese investment – short-term or mid-term – in some projects and industries that are considered sensitive, whatever the criteria employed. That does not prevent rolling Chinese investment in other less sensitive sectors. This has nothing to do with “debt-trap diplomacy”.
The beauty of the BRI concept is that it’s open and inclusive. Unlike Hotel California, you can check in or out anytime you like at the BRI Hotel. But, non-customers complain, how come it has “no clear goal, no detailed plan”? No wonder BRI is incomprehensible for Western myopia.
I have been following BRI in detail for five years now – even before it started. It’s never enough to stress the initial conceptualization, detailed in papers such as the 2014 Silk Road Economic Belt Construction, Vision and Path, by the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University. For all the current BRI-bashing hysteria, we are still in the planning phase. Implementation actually starts only in 2021 and goes all the way to 2049.
BRI principles include the aforementioned openness (“not limited to the ancient Silk Road area but open to all countries”); inclusiveness (“respect for the paths and modes of development chosen by different countries”); and “market rules”.
There’s no question BRI suffers from an acute PR problem; once again, the “lost in translation” element. Let’s assume the scheme had been packaged by a Washington PR firm. The key slogan would be something like “Asia Connectivity 2050”.
Because that’s exactly what it is, a very long-term project to create an ultra-complex web, hard and soft, of six main corridors linking China and Eurasia. It goes way beyond high-speed rail and pipelines. It encompasses financial integration and a new geopolitical paradigm.
It’s absolutely impossible to understand the complexity of BRI without understanding how the Chinese think. Peking University professor Zhai Kun qualified it years ago as President Xi’s “mega-strategy”. That means the finer points concerning details will be adjusted in real time along the way. There’s plenty of time – and it’s a long way.
Integrate or perish
One of those details is the port of al-Duqm, built in a deserted stretch of the coastline of Oman, just outside the Persian Gulf, thus strategically located close to massive Asia, Middle East and Africa trade across the Indian Ocean.
Duqm is a multibillion-dollar rail and shipping warehouse that attracted not only BRI-related Chinese investment (a new port plus industrial zones) but also Indian, South Korean and Saudi Arabian. Way beyond the Chinese scheme, this is all about Eurasia connectivity, and the Sultan of Oman gets it.
BRI does not exist in a vacuum. It’s part of the China-driven globalization 2.0. Belt and Road links up with the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the BRICS’ New Development Bank, the International North-South Transportation Corridor, the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).
The integration of BRI and the Eurasia Economic Union soon will be more than visible as China and Russia move to connect both Koreas – territorially, politically and economically – to the Eurasia heartland. South Korea wants to be part of that vast nexus because Seoul has identified the immense potential of a Trans-Korean Railway.
Even Germany and France are starting to question at the highest levels whether they should link up with real Eurasian integration alongside Russia, China, Iran, Turkey, BRICS emerging economies, plus SCO, BRI and EAEU, or remain just a glorified hostage of the hyperpower’s whims.
By 2025, when we will be thick into BRI’s implementation phase, the New Great Game will be all about the integration of Eurasia-wide infrastructure spanning 67% of the world’s population. There will be only one way to stop it …
Did you sleep through Pepe’s article? Your link is one of many Western propagandizing that Pepe is pushing back against. Pakistan like many developing countries has been feeding at Washington’s trough for decades and how have the common citizen profit by it? Thousands dead in the "War on Terror" and its economy strangled by IMF austerity policies. With BRI concessionary low interests loans, China has shown flexibility and at the very least, the country is left with valuable infrastructure like roads, ports, railways, airports, and power plants.
"changing growth strategies by switching the current ports’ commerce to Hambantota"
how does that lead to economic growth ?
If Russia wants to be an ally of China they would not been hacking DNC servers and helping Trump
Last time I checked Turkey is a member of NATO. East European countries are NATO members
Indians can speak for themselves whether they are ally of USA or not
China only friends are basketcases – Myanmar, Pakistan and North Korea
Howard Xue Yes, China is not the owner, but the benificiary at the cost of Rohyanga genocide. Can you tell why China is silent on Myanmar Rohyanga issue ?
I’ve liked reading Pepe Escobar over the years, but in this article his enthusiasm for BRI has clouded his judgment. China’s loans to Pakistan have led to a quadrupling of its public debt! From the very beginning, the port in Sri Lanka funded by Chinese loans couldn’t pay for itself, with the result that it was handed over to its Chinese creditors. In Eurasia as elsewhere, government officials are often overly optimistic, inefficient, and corrupt, and China (like other powerful countries) is using domestic situations to its advantage. A recent article that offers a different perspective: https://www.freightwaves.com/news/chinas-belt-and-road-looks-like-giant-debt-trap
LOL????
China is not the owner of the Road. Instead, China is just a contractor to do the construction job.
tell that to African states, Sri Lanka and Pakistan
The West is dominant because they have a dominant set of allies – Europe, USA, Canada, GCC, India, Japan, S.Korea
China has basketcases like North Korea, Myanmar and Pakistan on its side
Sri Lanka has been trading with the entire world. This Chinese built port adds no value
If it does not matter who runs it, China would not be signing a 99 year lease
The debt trap claims, now a mantra for any Chinese projects including in Africa, smacks of the anti semitism platform prior to WWII in Germany. The crash of the economy in Germany meant many citizens were forced to take tough loans from the Jewish bankers. This was resented of course but has nothing to do with the Jews. But it attracted a segment of the population who blamed the bankers for putting "upright" citizens into debt.
There is nothing that the world can build that the US cannot destroy.
For freedom!
Pepe. “Unlike Hotel California, you can check in or out anytime you like at the BRI Hotel.“ I love your luminous one liners. Shows that you are a baby boomer as well.
Only a baby boomer living through early years without radio, TV, smartphones or cars or escalators and air conditioning and just being happy that there was ‘food on the table’ for dinner and walking barefoot everywhere and catching fish by the river with bamboo rods and shooting at squirrels and monkeys in the trees with homemade catapults from the guava tree, would know what the good old humble simple rustic peaceful days of humanity were like.
And there were no ethnic or religious bias or discrimination amongst all the children in the village whatever their colour race or creed.
Simply put BRI is just like that being together whatever our race or religion or ideology all linked together hand in hand to ‘put food on the table’.
No ideology or religion is going to feed us physically, it might feed our soul or spirit, but putting our shoulders to the wheel and belting up our efforts and energy together will ‘put food on the table’.
Vincent Cheok @ https://whirlwindrambler.com/
Bob Nathaniel
The port will connect Sri Lanka to the world. Does it matter who runs it?
Pepe is the MAN!!
What about the Arakan Silk Roads over the Rohyanga blood.?
China is the sole benificiary of Arakan Silk road. Can China share the benifits with the Myanmar Rohyangas ? Rohyangas are human?
Nothing stops you from trading in the world. Please explain why the port in Sri Lanka failed. The end result was China got a 99 year lease on the port. Pakistan is the next domino to fall.
Poorer countries had better grab the opportunity early and enjoy the success. Good things never last forever…
Stupid countries and people still don’t have enough of the BS from the West should remain where they are.
Yes Syed, and let’s hope that Idlib will be the latest Gallipoli of the Anglo-Jews and all the other bastards that you indicated
As ususal, Pepe at his best.
BRI has a clear goal – world peace, and a detailed plan – travel infrastructure for Dialogue of Civilizations, Toynbee’s 5 – Hellenic West, Christian Russia, Islam, Indics, Sinics.
BRI is not just trade in goods. World peace through exchange of ideas, skills, people, a Dialogue of Civilizations as the ancient Silk Road was that brought Buddhism to China, and paper-making and gun-powder to the West.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNKTbMx8PFk
It is about integration of Europe, Africa, and Asia into one land based market, the largest in history. Trade leads to peace, and uncondional increase in welfare of both parties.
Incidentally, BRI is having a salutary effect on its participants. China made it clear to Pakistan that its culture of corruption has to end if funds are to continue. Imran Khan’s revolution will be incomplete without China’s corrective stand.
With active support of China, Russia and Iran have cleansed Iraq and Syria of anti-trade lovers of Kaliphate that killed the old Silk Road with oppressive Tariffs (Arabic word). China made it clear that it does not want an Encore. BRI will cleanse Islam of its ills.
Of course this does not sit well with Christian, Muslim, Jewish, and Hindu neocons who want to fill this world with divisions and violence, and exploit masses and sell armaments, and laugh all the way to banks.