China’s Belt and Road Initiative
posted by Dominque Elliott | October 9, 2019 | In NewsOn April 29, President Xi Jinping addressed the world and spoke on China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
“All interested countries are welcome to join us,” President Xi noted in Mandarin. “While the Belt and Road Initiative was launched by China, its opportunities and outcomes are shared by the world,” he said, stated in a forum.
What exactly is China’s Belt and Road Initiative?
According to the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, “China’s Belt and Road Initiative is an ambitious program to connect Asia with Africa and Europe via land and maritime networks along six corridors with the aim of improving regional integration, increasing trade and stimulating economic growth.”
Belt and Road Initiative was coined by President Xi, who was influenced by the past Silk and Road Initiative and its worldly influence. Although the initiative is global and has a $575 billion worth investment, it’s still not well known in the United States.
“I’ve never heard about the China’s Belt and Road Initiative,” Jamal Graham, a sophomore social work major replied when asked about his thought, “I never even read about it.”
China’s Belt and Road Initiative possibly originated from the Bottom Billion concept coined by Paul Collier. The concept suggests that a number of countries, especially Eastern countries, were left undeveloped after Western development. China’s BRI is also based in the belief that investing in Bottom Billion countries will help uplift their own country and advance their own economic development.
In order to practice this belief, China mainly invests in infrastructure, like bridges, roads, and trains, in underdeveloped countries in Africa. This stems from research, which suggests that investment in infrastructure projects can help disperse economic activities from high economic areas to low economic areas which need it the most. Infrastructure-based investment actually helped China’s own economic development.
China has recently been under fire for giving out loans to countries to fund the infrastructure projects, especially since some countries may not be able to pay them back. Critics call this a “debt-trap” for countries and accuse China of purposely planning it. But it’s been noted that countries not being able to pay back China’s investment may cause more damage than benefits to China.
In August, the World Bank reported that China’s current global investment is $575 billion, but backlash to China’s political and trade policies could shave as much as $800 billion off investment in China’s BRI, according to the Economic Times.
Still, China holds a positive outlook. Professor Xiangming Chen, who conducts research about China’s BRI, clarifies the mission of the campaign: “While not fully state-driven and coordinated, the Belt and Road Initiative led by China after 2013 and involving over 80 countries, through building an extensive infrastructure from Asia to Europe and Africa to facilitate a new round of cooperation and development, is capable of reshaping the post–Cold War international order and the global economy.”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.