In 2011, the US proposed its version of regional development initiative, The New Silk Road. It sought to bolster peace and stability in Afghanistan and across the region by resuming traditional trade routes and reconstructing broken infrastructure links, connecting the battle-scarred country to Central Asia, Pakistan India and beyond.
But the four-pronged initiative, which construed creating a new North-South transit and trading routes that compliment a vibrant East-West connections across Eurasia, never took off the ground and was dubbed a “misfire” by observers who believe that the project was under-funded and under-resourced and lacked Pacific-to-Atlantic scope.
The US concept to evolve an efficient and hardheaded regional infrastructure network also summed up to naught over Americans’ cardinal conundrum that Afghanistan could still convert into a kindergarten for terrorists, posing a threat to its national security. And then, there were of course worries that the triangular anti-American, China, Russia and Iran, could use the US-built linkages to inflate their influence in the region.
A couple of years after the launch of the US regional plan – China in 2013 shook the world by its trans-continental project – Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) – that suggested to revivify the ancient trade routes connecting China to the Mediterranean via Eurasia for centuries through land-based Silk Road Economic Belt and oceangoing 21st century Maritime Link Road.
Billed as a Chinese vision, strategy and foreign policy – the initiative, within five years of its kick off, established its worth by signing up more than 150 countries and organizations covering over 60% of the world population, in addition to scooping the trade volume between Beijing and BRI nations to $6 trillion, more than 30% of the world GDP.
China says by 2019, Chinese investors had founded about 44,000 companies in over 80% of the countries and regions. It further said at the end of the last year, China was the third-largest foreign investor globally behind the US and Netherlands with cumulative overseas investment of $2.2 trillion, creating 2.27 million foreign employments and contributing $56 billion in taxes to the host countries and regions.
Realizing impact of the BRI on global economy and China’s transition from a manufacturing assembly hub of the world to an economic powerhouse, the Geneva-based United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNSTAD) in August noted that nations can draw on significant lessons from the China experience to structurally transform their economies.
Without getting down to the nitty-gritty or probing the Chinese statistics, the BRI partners are keen how any major country can help to improve their infrastructure, increase trade, pour investment, alleviate poverty and upheave the virus-hit economies.
Nations would be least concerned whether Beijing observes the BRI a transcontinental chef-d'oeuvre or it is an “authoritarian world order” for Washington that is characterized by “debt-trap diplomacy,” fraught with “bribery, resource extraction, and opaque financial and commercial agreements” and “modern-day colonialism.”
Most developing nations would see the rivalry between the two economic heavyweights as a strategic competition or the great power competition in which Washington fears that Beijing is trying to dethrone its global leadership through “predatory” lending so it must activate all channels to corrode the new engine of Chinese growth, the BRI.
As the US believes that under the initiative, China is seeking to become the global center of trade, commerce and technology through a network of vassal states and sovereign economies are would be replaced with the CCP-controlled satellite states – the situation has led into full-blown cultural, educational, diplomatic, information, trade and technological war.
Washington’s brimming nuisance about Beijing’s growing influence and its moves – to slap tariffs on Chinese goods, sanction Huawei and other tech giants, designate Chinese media outlets as foreign missions, expel Chinese students, scale back diplomatic ties and develop strategic groupings like the Quad – outright describe that the US isn’t going to allow China to weaken its global dominance and power projection.
Taking reciprocal measures, China has too demonstrated its alacrity to clap back at the US to protect its interests and hundreds of billions of investments. A tug of war, where neither of the sides is willing to retreat, would force the global nations, especially the developing ones, to give up their neutrality and make a clear choice between the two colossi.
Lately, the US push at the initiative took a beating after experts said that the BRI projects were “overwhelmingly nonstrategic investments” in Malaysia, African rising debt levels weren’t China-made and China was renegotiating several contracts with the Southeast Asian nations over the uncertainties hanging around their economies.
In addition, Chinese key strategic allies such as Sri Lanka and Pakistan have repeatedly turned down the accusations that the BRI loans were weighing down on their economies. While Islamabad has linked its future with China, Colombo also continues to acknowledge Beijing’s assistance in the development of the country’s infrastructure.
As China makes headway to become the only major economy recording a positive growth in 2020 amid swarms of governments inscribing their countries with the BRI, the Covid-19 affronting the worldwide economies and researches ditching the US idea – Washington’s “Chinese debt-trap” diplomacy is appearing to have outshined by China’s “win-win cooperation,” soliciting the new White House dweller to come out with thoroughly totally reformed strategy.
*This is one of my opinion pieces (unedited) that first appeared in "New Straits Times":