.jpg)
Since 1904 TASS has been Russia's leading news agency. For more than 113 years, TASS has ceaselessly strived to deliver the latest and most accurate news ...
Putin discusses evacuation of CIS citizens from Gaza with Egyptian president
News about Belt and Road Initiative, Xi
.png)
Today, the Belt and Road initiative is the backbone of China’s foreign economic and foreign policy
TASS-FACTBOX. Beijing is hosting the 3rd Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation from October 17 to 18. This year’s theme is High-quality Belt and Road Cooperation: Together for Common Development and Prosperity.
The event will gather representatives from more than 130 countries. On October 17, Russian President Vladimir Putin will take part in the forum.
Belt and Road Initiative
The Belt and Road Initiative is a global strategic project for the development of transport corridors connecting by land or sea more than 60 countries in Asia, Africa and Europe, and the formation of a trade and economic space with the participation of these countries. The concept was put forward by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2013.
Today, the Belt and Road initiative is the backbone of China’s foreign economic and foreign policy.
The initiative includes several projects. First of all, these are the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road. These projects, proposed by Xi Jinping in 2013, were named after the ancient Silk Road, a caravan route that connected China and Europe through Central Asia in the 2nd century BC. - 15th century AD. The first project involves the formation of a trade and economic space along transport corridors connecting China with Southeast, South and Central Asia, Russia and Europe by land. The second one connects the coastal regions of China with Southeast and South Asia, the Middle East, East Africa and Europe, as well as the countries of the South Pacific.
In 2015, the Digital Silk Road project was added, stimulating the development of digital interconnectedness of the countries participating in the initiative: laying fiber optic cables and 5G cellular networks, creating data storage centers, using satellite navigation, and developing e-commerce.
In 2018, China initiated the Polar Silk Road project, which involves coordinating development strategies with Arctic states to facilitate the creation of a maritime economic corridor between China and Europe across the Arctic Ocean.
The estimated time frame for the implementation of these Belt and Road initiative projects is 30 years.
The projects are financed by Chinese banks and funds, including the China Development Bank and the Export-Import Bank of China and the Silk Road Fund created in 2014, as well as a number of international financial institutions, including the Asian Development Bank and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.
China builds interaction with its partners on a bilateral basis. To date, under the initiative, the Chinese side has concluded agreements with 150 countries and 30 international organizations. The initiative’s projects are being implemented in countries of Eurasia, Africa, Latin America, and Western Europe, covering two-thirds of all countries and more than 60% of the world's population.
Russia is not directly involved in the initiative, but supports it. In 2015, the Russian Federation and the People's Republic of China signed an agreement to connect the Silk Road Economic Belt and the Eurasian Economic Union, an integration economic association whose members are Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Russia.
.jpg)
According to the Chinese government website, for the period from 2013 to 2022, trade turnover between China and the countries participating in the Belt and Road initiative amounted to $19.1 trillion, with average annual growth of 6.4%. The total volume of investments exceeded $380 billion, including China’s direct investments to participating countries to the tune of more than $240 billion. In the first half of 2023 alone, trade turnover between China and Belt and Road countries grew by 9.8% year on year. The share of this indicator in China's foreign trade turnover reached 34.3%. More than 3,000 projects with an investment volume of almost $1 trillion have already been implemented through the Belt and Road initiative.
.jpg)
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
China woos global south and embraces Putin at belt and road Beijing summit
World leaders are gathering in Beijing for China’s belt and road initiative (BRI) forum, the third such event since the trademark global development drive was launched by President Xi Jinping 10 years ago.
The BRI was originally envisioned as a vast physical and digital infrastructure project to connect China with central Asia, south-east Asia, Europe and the rest of the world. It later broadened into a mammoth infrastructure financing vehicle for Chinese lenders to support projects in nearly every corner of the world, particularly in the global south. With that support came China’s mounting influence on the world stage, even as western countries became increasingly sceptical of the BRI.
In one of the biggest international conferences since China abandoned its zero-Covid policy at the end of last year and reopened borders, the BRI summit is as notable for its absences as for those attending.
Of the more than 130 countries going to the two-day summit, which kicks off on Tuesday, the most senior representative from the EU is expected to be Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s prime minister, who is much more supportive of China than other leaders in the bloc.
✓ Analysts see Xi making a renewed focus on engagement with the global south, as relations with the west are increasingly frosty.
Other notable guests include the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and a representative of the Taliban. The last time Putin visited Beijing was shortly before his troops invaded Ukraine.
.jpg)
The invitation of Putin to Xi’s flagship summit was effectively an “outvite” to western governments and organisations, said Christoph Nedopil Wang, the director of the Griffith Asia Institute. It emphasises the alignment of Chinese and Russian political priorities, even as Beijing has tried to position itself as a peacemaker in the Ukraine conflict.
Russia has made similar overtures. On Monday it said that it was joining China in restricting imports of Japanese seafood amid concerns about contamination related to the release of wastewater from the Fukushima nuclear plant. Some analysts argue that the restrictions are motivated by political rather than safety concerns.
But the attendance of Putin at the BRI, despite the fact that Russia has not officially signed up to the initiative, underlines the close relationship between the two countries. Xi hopes to use the forum to promote China (and Russia’s) “multipolar” worldview that they argue gives the global south more agency. The offer is increasingly a political one, as the amount of financing available – and desired – through the BRI has tapered off.
Recent research published by Boston University found that while China’s development finance institutions provided about $331bn (£271bn) to recipient countries between 2013 and 2021, “many of the recipients of Chinese finance are subject to significant debt distress”. China has also spent about $240bn bailing out countries struggling with their BRI debts, according to separate research published earlier this year.
BRI financing was increasingly focused on smaller projects, with specific aims relating to social or political goals, said Linda Calabrese, a research fellow at ODI, a global affairs thinktank. That is a shift that is also driven by borrowers who are increasingly concerned about ending up in situations of unmanageable debts or infrastructure projects.
It is a marked difference from when the BRI was launched in 2013. Xi, then newly minted as China’s leader, seemed like an ascendant force on the world stage. Beijing promised to support countries that had not been served by traditional multilateral lenders.
But since then there has been a trade war with the US, Russia’s war in Ukraine, a global pandemic and slowing economic growth in China, all of which have dragged on China’s development ambitions. About $1tn of investment has been galvanised under the auspices of the BRI, according to China’s foreign ministry, but the volume of lending to poor countries peaked several years ago.
.jpg)
Last year at the UN general assembly, Xi launched the idea of a global development initiative (GDI), China’s new development concept linked to the UN’s sustainable development goals. That “sharpened the focus of the BRI [as] a more commercial initiative compared to the more classical development-focused GDI”, said Nedopil-Wang.
Beijing also wants to shift to quality rather than quantity when it comes to its overseas lending and investments. In a white paper published last week, the Chinese government said that “the ultimate goal of the BRI is to help build a global community of shared future”. That means focusing on issues such as food security, infectious diseases, artificial intelligence and climate change, according to the white paper, rather than just economic development.
The white paper called for “high-quality growth”, using what has also been a buzzword for China’s domestic economic policy. In recent months, Beijing has tried to position itself as a member of the global south, despite the fact that as the world’s second-largest economy it has a heft on the world stage matched only by the US.
China’s alignment with the global south may be hard to sustain in terms of raw economic development, as China has jumped from being a low-income country to an upper middle-income country in lightning-fast speed. But with the strong focus on the global south at this week’s BRI forum, Beijing is trying to make clear that its offer to the global south is still more attractive than the offer from Brussels or Washington.
+++++++
As Xi Celebrates a Decade of the Belt and Road Initiative, Its Future Looks Uncertain
When President Xi Jinping first assembled world leaders to map out his vision for expanding Chinese soft power via a web of infrastructure investment in 2017, he called the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) the “project of the century.”
As the Chinese statesman opens the third Belt and Road Forum this week, the future of his brainchild looks uncertain. While the project has drawn $1 trillion in its first decade, according to estimates from think tank Green Finance & Development Center, the momentum has tapered off in recent years.
Watch more from TIME
China’s overall activity in BRI countries is down about 40% from its 2018 peak as the world’s second-biggest economy slows. Beijing faces accusations of being an irresponsible lender driving countries to default. Fractured ties with the U.S. have made association with Xi’s pet project increasingly divisive—Italy, its sole Group of Seven member, is set to exit by the year’s end.
One Chinese official considered the BRI dead, dealt twin blows by Covid and China’s economic problems. The official, who asked not to be identified discussing a sensitive topic, said the government hoped this summit to mark BRI’s 10th anniversary would reinvigorate the project.
Read More: Bye Bye BRI? Why 3 New Initiatives Will Shape the Next 10 Years of China’s Global Outreach
The U.S. assesses that the BRI is in deep trouble, according to a senior American official who asked not to be identified to discuss private conversations. Beijing has less capital to lend and pressure is growing to recoup the outstanding money it loaned, the official said.
Xi will have the chance to answer his critics when a host of Global South leaders arrive this week to pledge support for the program and test Beijing’s bandwidth for new deals—chief among them Russian President Vladimir Putin. Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Indonesian President Joko Widodo, Argentina’s President Alberto Fernandez, and Thai Premier Srettha Thavisin are also attending.
“Xi will invite his best friends and have all these people come together to celebrate,” said Alfred Wu, an associate professor at the National University of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. “It’s a clear message that China is trying to have its own allies while challenging the U.S.-led world order.”
Pandemic pullback
The outbreak of Covid put the brakes on China’s infrastructure and trade initiative, as a global slowdown imperiled debtors’ ability to repay their loans. Zambia was the first African country to default during the pandemic in late 2020, putting China, the nation’s largest creditor, in the spotlight.
As other nations including Ethiopia, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan fell into debt crises, annual engagement under the BRI plummeted to $63.7 billion in the first year of the global health crisis, according to a study by the Green Finance and Development Center at Shanghai-based Fudan University—down from a peak of more than $120 billion in 2018.
That pullback has been sustained by geopolitical tensions and domestic problems plaguing China’s economy, which show little sign of abating.
Read More: China Faces a Familiar Economic Downturn. But Its Crisis Is Worsened by the War in Ukraine
“External shocks like the Ukraine war and, perhaps in the coming weeks the new war in the Middle East, are deepening debt and inflation burdens,” said Michael Kugelman, director of the South Asia Institute at the Wilson Center.
China has responded by shifting to so-called “small but beautiful” projects that benefit people’s livelihoods. The state-run People’s Daily this month cited a water plant in Botswana upgraded by a Chinese firm and a technology partnership with a seed company in Costa Rica as examples.
The average BRI investment deal decreased by 48% from the 2018 peak to about $392 million in the first half of this year, according to the Fudan report. The report tracks both the value of construction projects that are funded by China as well as those that Chinese companies have equity stakes in.
China’s private companies are also becoming more active in a space once dominated by policy banks and state-owned companies, said Christoph Nedopil Wang, director of the Griffith Asia Institute, who authored the Fudan study.
That’s resulted in some big investments with a focus more on global markets than building infrastructure. China’s Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. and Mercedes-Benz Group AG, for example, plan to invest more than $7 billion in a plant in Hungary, the biggest single project in a BRI country since it started in 2013.
Yet the Belt and Road initiative has always been loosely defined, with the label often applied to any projects in nations with friendly ties to China.
The strategy’s geographical focus has also evolved in step with Xi’s foreign policy. Saudi Arabia was a top three recipient of BRI lending this year, according to the Fudan study, as the Chinese leader seeks to expand his influence in the Middle East.
Political problems
Still, Italy has questioned whether Xi’s flagship initiative brings economic benefits at all.
“We have exported a load of oranges to China, they have tripled their exports to Italy in three years,” Italy’s Defense Minister Guido Crosetto said in July. “Paris, without signing any treaties, in those days sold planes to Beijing for tens of billions.”
After Italy signed an agreement to cooperate on the BRI in 2019, its imports from China accelerated but that bump wasn’t reciprocated. Last year, Italian exports to China only rose 5%, lagging behind those of Germany and France—two countries that aren’t in the BRI.
Hungary’s Orban said after a meeting with Chinese Premier Li Qiang on Monday that his country is looking to boost cooperation with China. “Instead of blocs and shutting out, Hungary’s goal is to develop economic cooperation,” Orban said, adding that China is the biggest source of foreign direct investment this year.
China’s Foreign Ministry hasn’t announced plans for a leader’s roundtable that Xi hosted at the two previous events, as the summit looks set to attract a smaller crowd of world leaders.
Spurred spending
For Global South nations, Xi’s efforts to pitch his country as a leader of the developing world has been a vital source of funding. China extended $114 billion in development financing to Africa alone from 2013 to 2021, according to a study by Boston University.
That spending spurred the U.S. and European governments to expand engagement with some developing nations to counter China’s influence. But while Western rivals have pledged billions of dollars, many of their projects have been slow to get off the ground.
China’s credit lines will be tested this week when Kenya’s leader William Ruto is expected to ask for $1 billion to finance stalled infrastructure projects. Wu Peng, department director of African affairs at China’s Foreign Ministry, said this month a “big loan” for a new railway project in Africa will be announced soon.
That won’t be enough to reverse the overall trend of a downsized BRI, but may signal Xi’s ongoing commitment to the program as a linchpin of his foreign policy.
Even with the slower pace of investment, Xi’s imprint means BRI won’t fade away, according to Raffaello Pantucci, a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore.
“Xi being associated with it so closely, means it’s going to stay an important and relevant thing for as long as he stays in power,” Pantucci said. The pace was probably “too fast at the beginning anyway.”
No comments:
Post a Comment