For over three decades, every Chinese foreign minister’s first overseas trip of the year has been to Africa. This year continued the tradition with China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, visiting Egypt, Tunisia, Togo and Côte d’Ivoire. Notably, every one of these countries is coastal. And yet, at a time of continued speculation over China’s next military installation in Africa, none of these countries has featured prominently as potential locations in previous analyses.
We might, therefore, reasonably ask what China’s current considerations are around basing in Africa. Faced with an increasingly multipolar and assertive Africa at a time of domestic economic challenge, however, China’s long-term strategy remains unclear.… Seguir leyendo »
La nueva Ruta de la Seda afronta la próxima década apostando por las mismas líneas estratégicas que concibieron la iniciativa, aunque la experiencia de estos diez años, y la diplomacia ya desplegada, guiarán la priorización de proyectos y regiones en esta nueva etapa que comienza. Habrá desarrollo de infraestructuras, pero de menor envergadura, aunque el principal foco de interés seguirá siendo expandir y fortalecer entornos de cooperación geopolíticos, atrayendo a los países del Sur Global hacia las múltiples dimensiones que componen la iniciativa.
La lista de asistentes al tercer Foro de la Ruta de la Seda, celebrado el mes pasado, permite esbozar la relación de países que seguirán jugando un papel destacado en la configuración de alianzas, reflejo de cómo la diplomacia del gasto en infraestructuras ha asentado un modelo de relación de múltiples dimensiones.… Seguir leyendo »
China’s military base in Djibouti isn’t the only sign of increasing Chinese security engagement in Africa. Although analysts typically see China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) as a global investment and economic growth program, these projects also may facilitate increased Chinese security cooperation with participating nations. By early 2021, 140 countries worldwide had signed more than 200 BRI cooperation agreements — essentially frameworks for Chinese companies to build infrastructure projects such as ports, railways, power stations and telecommunication networks using low-interest Chinese loans to host countries. Implementing large-scale infrastructure projects requires time, personnel and robust financing, and violence and instability can affect the longevity and profitability of these initiatives.… Seguir leyendo »
On March 18, Tanzanians woke up to the news that their president, John Magufuli, had died. Nicknamed “the bulldozer” for his advocacy of infrastructure development, in Africa-China circles he was known for indefinitely suspending the involvement of China Merchants Holdings International in the development of the $10 billion Bagamoyo port, citing the project’s skewed terms and conditions.
The proliferation of Chinese enterprises involved in Africa has attracted a great deal of attention from academics, policymakers and other observers in recent years. Of particular concern to many are China’s employment practices for large infrastructure projects on the continent. Although infrastructure plays an important role in economic growth and development, most African countries lack adequate and reliable infrastructure necessary to boost economic development.… Seguir leyendo »
After extensive negotiations, the Chinese government in January agreed to let Kenya defer $245 million in repayments on loans from state-owned China Exim Bank. The reprieve was likely a relief to Kenya’s government, which borrowed over $4.7 billion to build the 298-mile Standard Gauge Railway project connecting the port of Mombasa with the capital, Nairobi.
But some economists question the financial viability of the project, along with the high costs. To critics, Kenya’s railway project represents another example of Chinese-owed debt, and China’s growing influence in Africa. Indeed, many commentators point out that Kenya has an estimated $9 billion in China-financed debt — and note their concerns that a growing number of projects under China’s Belt and Road Initiative, in Africa and elsewhere, may be upending a Western development financing model based on rule of law and high environmental standards.… Seguir leyendo »
Tensions between Indian and Chinese troops have simmered since early May in the remote, high Karakoram mountains that separate India’s northern Ladakh region from the alkaline desert of Aksai Chin, which is claimed by India but controlled by China and abuts its Xinjiang province.
It is a forbidding landscape of cold deserts, snow-capped peaks, sparse vegetation and freezing temperature about 14,000 feet above sea level. On Monday evening, in a brutal hand-to-hand battle, Chinese soldiers killed at least 20 Indian soldiers with wooden staves and nail-studded clubs, in the severest escalation of the dispute on the Sino-Indian frontier in decades.
British colonial authorities bequeathed India a border with China that was neither delineated on a map nor demarcated on the ground.… Seguir leyendo »
North Africa is expected to become home to some massive infrastructural projects, including Morocco’s Tangier Med Port and Egypt’s new administrative capital, after all of the countries in the region signed up to China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). While much has been written about the physical infrastructure under the BRI umbrella, China’s ambition to extend its digital footprint in North Africa has received far less attention despite the significant economic, political and strategic implications.
At the first BRI forum in May 2017, Chinese President Xi Jinping announced that big data would be integrated into the BRI to create the ‘Digital Silk Road of the 21st century’.… Seguir leyendo »
As China welcomes dozens of world leaders to Beijing for its second Belt and Road forum, it has one simple aim: relaunching President Xi Jinping’s controversial global infrastructure drive.
Since it began five years ago, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has sunk hundreds of billions into port, railway and power projects stretching from south-east Asia to central Europe. But its path has been bumpy, drawing sharp criticism over the ruinous debts that some countries have racked up amid Chinese largesse.
Xi will stress sustainable financing and transparency this week, amid the usual talk of 'win win' cooperation. Yet BRI’s problems are structural, not presentational.… Seguir leyendo »
Depuis quelque temps, évoquer le fait que les fonds chinois qui irriguent les projets des « nouvelles routes de la soie » pourraient faire exploser la dette des pays qui les accueillent déclenche des ripostes outragées de Pékin. Ce qui montre bien que cela appuie là où ça fait mal. Car la plupart de ces projets sont financés par des prêts, et non par des dons. Quand les entreprises chinoises arrivent, que pèsent des pays comme le Tadjikistan ou Djibouti, petits pots de terre de respectivement 7,4 et 2 milliards de dollars (6,5 et 1,7 milliard d’euros) de produit intérieur brut, face à l’énorme pot de fer chinois avec ses 12 000 milliards ?… Seguir leyendo »
One could be forgiven for having missed the fifth birthday last month of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
Celebrations were notably mute, for two obvious reasons. One is the increasingly audible grumbling among recipient countries about the effects of what Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad has called a 'new colonialism' — a phrase that captures the idea that the BRI has led to the accumulation of debt on receiving countries’ balance sheets to pay for projects of uncertain value, built mostly by Chinese contractors on opaque terms, allowing China’s regional influence to grow in ways that are out of proportion to the benefits that countries can expect to enjoy.… Seguir leyendo »
On 23 September the first high-speed trains will depart a gleaming new station in Hong Kong for cities across the rest of China. Later in the year a new bridge connecting Hong Kong, Macao and Zhuhai (on the western bank of the Pearl River) is due to open to traffic. These expensive and somewhat controversial projects mark the latest infrastructure links between Hong Kong and its hinterland.
They come at a time when growing attention is being paid to the Greater Bay Area, a Chinese government plan to develop further a massive urban cluster in southern China, including Hong Kong, Macao and the nine most developed cities in the adjacent Guangdong province.… Seguir leyendo »
One of the most dangerous confrontations between the United States and China is heating up. Warships are being deployed, bombers are taking wing and threats are being exchanged — all of it sparked by China’s growing mastery of the use of the world’s most overlooked natural resource: sand.
The point of contention is a set of man-made islands China has built in a strategic and hotly disputed patch of the South China Sea. It’s one of the world’s busiest shipping routes, and home to some 10 percent of the world’s fish. What’s more, billions of barrels of oil and trillions of cubic feet of natural gas lie under the seafloor.… Seguir leyendo »
In the run-up to Pakistan’s general election on July 25, most political parties stand united in their belief that the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) will transform Pakistan’s ailing economy. In May, Pakistan’s ambassador to China asserted that “regardless of any political change in Pakistan, our commitment towards the successful completion of CPEC will not change.”
But if political support at the national level appears unwavering, local opposition is growing over the lack of consultation and concerns regarding the inequitable distribution of the prospective benefits. In few places is this more noticeable than the southern Balochistan fishing town of Gwadar, the entry point of the corridor and a microcosm of the center-periphery tensions elsewhere that threaten CPEC’s implementation.… Seguir leyendo »
One of the original motivating forces for China’s Belt and Road Initiative is risk management: the aim being to use infrastructure to drive economic development, so improving political stability and creating a favorable impression of China in countries bordering China and beyond.
Yet these investments themselves are inherently risky: large-scale, debt-financed, long-term infrastructure projects in countries that often have weak governance, undefined or poorly-executed rule of law and corruption. China has experience managing infrastructure risks within its borders in its own ways, but it has much less experience overseas.
And, while well-executed investments can enhance stability, the same investments, executed poorly, can create their own backlash in countries that see costs exceed benefits.… Seguir leyendo »
To meet the challenge of climate change, there is a need to massively increase financing for sustainable infrastructure: the governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, recently estimated that to enable a transition to a low carbon economy there is a need for a four-fold increase in finance in new technology investments and long-term infrastructure projects.
China, through its Belt and Road Initiative, could help provide this financing. Given its scale and ambition – China has already pledged $1 trillion to Belt and Road projects – this initiative could have a transformative impact.
Sustainable infrastructure is that which not only minimizes any negative environmental and social impacts but also brings about positive change, enhancing the environment, livelihoods, and the economy.… Seguir leyendo »
In a lesser-known novel, “Claudius Bombarnac,” Jules Verne describes the adventures of the titular foreign correspondent as he rides the “Grand Transasiatic Railway” from the “European frontier” to “the capital of the Celestial Empire.” A cast of international characters, by turns comical, curious and shady, accompanies the French reporter by train from the Caspian Sea to Peking, narrowly escaping bandits and delivering a mysterious cargo.
When first published in 1893, the book was futuristic fiction. There was no continuous rail link across Eurasia. There still isn’t, but 125 years later China now envisions financing and building multiple such overland routes (with much faster trains).… Seguir leyendo »
First announced in 2013, President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative promises, at a minimum, to improve infrastructure and connectivity between China and the rest of Eurasia. Any bold plan to finance infrastructure on a large-scale across so many low-income economies deserves a sympathetic ear and a positive reception. But many wonder how large the role can be for non-Chinese players in what is clearly an initiative of the Chinese government.
So far, Chinese state and policy banks account for the overwhelming majority of the financing – and this money then flows to Chinese enterprises, mainly state-owned. One study found that 89% of the work went to Chinese contractors on China-funded projects.… Seguir leyendo »
China’s “One Belt, One Road” initiative, an economic expansion plan that follows the trade routes of the medieval Tang and Yuan dynasties across Eurasia, is overly ambitious because, like all grand strategies, it is aspirational. Yet the future of Eurasia is written into its design.
This new Silk Road serves several goals of China’s leaders, who are intent on making their country a full-fledged superpower. It is a branding operation for many of the roads, bridges, pipelines and railroads that China has already built, linking it with the former-Soviet-controlled countries of energy-rich Central Asia. In the process, One Belt, One Road seeks to develop — and at the same time surround — the Muslim region of China that abuts Central Asia.… Seguir leyendo »
Desde 2013, China promueve la “Iniciativa de la Franja y la Ruta”, que busca conectar a más de sesenta países de Asia, Europa y África mediante la coordinación de políticas e infraestructuras físicas. Los críticos temen que China, en su afán de ampliar su influencia geopolítica para competir con naciones como Estados Unidos y Japón, emprenda proyectos económicamente inviables. Pero siempre que se cumplan algunas condiciones, la base económica de la iniciativa es sólida.
Como confirma un informe reciente del Banco Asiático de Desarrollo, muchos países incluidos en la iniciativa necesitan con urgencia inversiones en infraestructura a gran escala, precisamente el tipo de inversión comprometido por China.… Seguir leyendo »
“The project of the century” is how Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi touted the Belt and Road Initiative to the world when addressing the UN General Assembly on 21 September. It was only the latest in a series of pronouncements and events, including a Belt and Road Forum in Beijing in May and the ninth BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) summit in Xiamen in early September, choreographed to position China at the vanguard of a new stage of globalisation. Step by step, China is demonstrating that the Belt and Road is now the guiding framework for its international economic statecraft.… Seguir leyendo »
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