A strategic environment much changed since Xi Jinping unveiled the massive infrastructure plan in 2013 has the country’s top leaders wondering how far this grand enterprise can go
China credits President Xi Jinping’s massive infrastructure plan, the “Belt and Road Initiative”, with sparking a surge in the construction of railways, roads, bridges and ports across more than 65 countries and regions.
Five years after its launch, however, a litany of risks and criticism and a changing strategic environment have the country’s top leaders wondering just how far this grand and ambitious enterprise can go.
A new sense of urgency was palpable when Xi asked belt and road officials for their reports on the risks facing various projects, a source with knowledge of the gathering early this year told the South China Morning Post.
When officials attempted to impress Xi with descriptions of the progress being made on his pet programme, the president interrupted them, insisting they level with him about the risks and difficulties increasingly dogging it, the source said.
When first unveiled in September and October 2013 during the president’s visits to Kazakhstan and Indonesia, the strategy – initially known as the “One Belt, One Road” initiative – was promoted as “a bid to enhance regional connectivity and embrace a brighter future”.
China watchers wary of Beijing, however, termed the proposal a push by the government to seize a larger role in global affairs via a China-centred trading network.
Encompassing 65 countries with a combined gross domestic product of US$23 trillion and total population of 4.4 billion, the belt and road strategy was introduced as a way to advance China’s political interests abroad while reducing its overcapacity problems at home.
Focused on infrastructure, it was to be a model not only for developing countries, but also industrialised nations in Europe and North America that needed to replace ageing facilities and systems.
Major projects include a US$5 billion China-Belarus industrial estate, a US$3.1 billion bridge and railway project in Bangladesh and a US$5.8 billion China-Laos railway.
Other China-funded work in the initiative includes building a US$10 billion refinery in Saudi Arabia; a new city next to the Port of Colombo, the largest and busiest port in Sri Lanka with a total investment of US$13 billion over the next 25 years; and a freight route linking China’s eastern coast with London.
But Beijing has many barriers to overcome at home and abroad before it can realise its belt and road ambitions.
At home, doubt has been voiced publicly about whether the belt and road can tangibly improve China’s domestic welfare system. Outside the country, the initiative has been portrayed as Beijing’s attempt to lay a debt trap for smaller nations to increase their reliance on China.
“When the Belt and Road Initiative was launched five years ago, it mainly targeted the Eurasia region,” said Wang Yiwei, an international affairs professor at Renmin University in Beijing. “There was no expectation that it would expand to wider regions that also cover Africa.”
As the initiative grows in scope, Chinese companies and even some local Chinese governments have increasingly branded their projects as part of the belt and road strategy.
