Posts Tagged ‘OBOR’

China’s Belt and Road Initiative: A Call for Pragmatism

Posted: May 29, 2018 in Royal United Services Institute
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Another one for RUSI, this time looking at how the UK should respond to the Belt and Road Initiative. Rather repeats points from previous pieces, but still need to be made. More on this topic in the form of a more substantial piece soon hopefully.

Also, catching up on some other things – this report Understanding the Factors Contributing to Radicalisation Among Central Asian Labour Migrants in Russia which was the product of a longer project we worked on at RUSI finally emerged. It looks at the phenomenon of radicalisation amongst Central Asian labour migrants in Russia. Was the product of a lot of effort, and the final drafting of the paper is heavily owned by my RUSI colleague Mo who took the lead, and Sarah and Nadine who both contributed substantially to both working on the project and drafting bits. Thank you all! Off the back of this, did a Majilis podcast with the excellent Bruce and Muhammad for RFE/RL.

And on the other side of my substantive equation, spoke to the Intercept about the far right terror menace in the UK, and to Voice of America about the Liege terror attack today.

port_of_gwadar_pakistan_china_belt_and_road_initiative

China’s Belt and Road Initiative: A Call for Pragmatism

Raffaello Pantucci
Commentary, 22 May 2018
China, International Security Studies

China’s Belt and Road Initiative requires a logical response, one based on an assessment of realities rather than rhetoric, and reciprocity, rather than outright confrontation.

There has been little clarity of the UK’s approach to the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) since the prime minister’s visit to Beijing in January. The key message to emerge from the visit seemed contradictory: the UK claimed to be ‘a natural partner’ for the BRI, but at the same time, Prime Minister Theresa May refused to sign a memorandum of understanding for the initiative presented by Chinese leaders. But this is a comprehensible paradox. The UK is facing the same conundrum posed to most countries: Chinese investment is attractive, but the norms and political pressure that may follow in the wake of this grand initiative are not.

The key to properly responding to Beijing’s economic statecraft under the BRI is clarity. The foreign policy concept advanced by Chinese President Xi Jinping is the latest expression of China’s ‘going out’ policy; it provides the overarching logic for Chinese external investment. The BRI narrative is one that has grown over time to overwhelm Chinese foreign policy; almost any external engagement that China engages in can be captured in some way under the BRI.

The first point worth remembering is that just because China talks of the BRI in grandiose uniform terms, this does not mean other countries need to be engaged with it as a single project. For European powers, for example, it is abundantly clear that there is a vast difference between Chinese projects in Europe, and projects in faraway parts of Asia. The BRI concept is an overarching foreign policy idea best understood as a series of distinct projects. And, as with any large set of projects (or foreign policy goals laid out by a foreign power), some elements have a natural logic of cooperation to them, while others do not.

Secondly, it is essential to understand what is actually happening on the ground, since there is much rhetoric and sometimes little action when it comes to the BRI. There are numerous examples of mismatched expectations throughout Central and Eastern Europe. The much vaunted 16+1 format (China plus the former communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe) has delivered little in terms of solid investment; the Czech Republic has found itself facing a sudden massive loss of prospective investment as Chinese energy conglomerate CEFC withdrew abruptly from its push into the Czech market. By contrast, Pakistan is abuzz with activity, as Chinese companies build new infrastructure up and down the country.

The moral of these contrasting episodes is, therefore, to focus on what is happening, not on what is being merely discussed or announced. For, while this is an obvious point, it remains far too easy to get caught up in the noise around Chinese projects and miss what is actually going on. It is also too easy to fall for the other stories that such mega-projects generate. Some stories – such as allegations that Chinese prison labour is being used to implement infrastructure projects – are untrue, while others – such as claims that some countries are taking on onerous debt burdens alongside Chinese projects – are true. But even then, the debt burden story is nuanced. For example, the terms offered by the Export–Import Bank of China or the China Development Bank are sometimes favourable, but there are also genuine questions about the financial liabilities of some projects once they are up and running: see, for instance, the controversy over the sizeable obligations that the government of Pakistan has assumed in guaranteeing revenue for the many Chinese-financed and executed electricity generating projects in the country.

Finally, there is the broader ideological question posed by the BRI. As Western values of prosperity through democracy are being increasingly questioned by Western publics, and governments themselves, Beijing is offering an alternative worldview underpinned by norms and standards that do not necessarily conform with Western outlooks. Yet even on this point, the debate needs to be focused on a case by case basis. The relatively new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) that elicited such a great controversy in the West was in part a response to a perception among countries of the global south that the dominant international financial institutions did not represent their interests or give them a voice. The AIIB is a product of these considerations as well as an attempt by Beijing to try its own hand at operating international structures that are not Western-invented. In sum, far from being a parallel or disruptive player, the AIIB could be seen as representing a positive Chinese-led contribution to the international order.

In contrast, China’s push to advance its version of the internet to strengthen models of state control, or its attempts to use its economic weight as a coercive tool, remain to be contested. But the key to any such response is strengthening alliances to confront patterns of behaviour from Beijing – either under the auspices of the BRI or otherwise – that are against national interests or those shared throughout the West. Beijing may resist, seeking ways to circumvent such opposition, but this is the natural push-and-pull of international affairs. The key to guiding a response is to offer alternatives and to think about what could address the issues on the ground that Beijing is seeking to resolve through its investments. In other words: if the UK is concerned with a project being undertaken by a developing country under the BRI, they should find ways of engaging with that country to either agree upon alternative sources of investment or to ensure that the Chinese project is delivered to an acceptable standard and that it will deliver maximum local benefit.

This lesson is broadly applicable. The West should focus on engaging with segments of the BRI that are empirically underway, and should engage with local partners to ensure they gain real benefits. The idea that the BRI could be a source of massive profit for UK companies based globally is a view that needs tempering. UK companies in Beijing are already making money accompanying their long-standing Chinese partners as they pursue the BRI. The broader profit is more likely to come from taking advantage of the infrastructure investment that is taking place, and finding ways of ensuring that the countries receiving BRI investment are able to grow in its wake.

The key point to remember within all of this is that the Chinese companies and banks making deals under the BRI are focusing on their own interests; they will expect everyone else to do the same thing.

China’s Eurasian Pivot: The Silk Road Economic Belt

Posted: January 26, 2018 in Royal United Services Institute
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Been a bit quiet of late, am focused on some larger writing projects which should be coming out over the next few months. We did, however, finally launch the Whitehall Paper authored with my colleague Sarah Lain which came out last year at an event at RUSI in London with Mark Field, MP, Minister for Asia at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and James Kynge of the Financial Times. Given it is behind a paywall, I cannot just post the paper here, but it can be found online and if you get in touch with me, I can see what I can do to help. Many thanks to the MacArthur Foundation for their generous support of this work, and as ever, to find more work on this topic, check out China in Central Asia.

Separately, spoke to Eurasianet about China’s rail activity in Central Asia, WikiTribune about ISIS, the Times quoted my book in an article about Hafiz Saeed, and the Financial Times about the Belt and Road.

China’s Eurasian Pivot: The Silk Road Economic Belt

WHP_Chinas Eurasian Pivot
Raffaello Pantucci and Sarah Lain
Whitehall Papers, 31 May 2017
China, New Silk Road, International Security Studies, Pacific
The modern Silk Road is a key component of China’s political and economic strategy in Eurasia.

China’s growing influence across its western and southern borders is one of the great geopolitical trends of the past decade. With the development of its western domestic regions, Beijing has been drawn into building trade and economic corridors in nearby Central and South Asian countries. Yet these states are home to security risks which China is only now beginning to address.

China’s Eurasian Pivot analyses the country’s growing regional footprint from an economic, security and political perspective. It offers a comprehensive overview of China’s relations with Central and South Asia, showing that the policies now shaped by the concept of the Belt and Road Initiative are ones that China has been implementing in the region for some time.

The paper concludes that China is still developing its approach to the region, which is increasingly being driven by events and external relations. Beijing has stressed that its policies must be successful – both within the region itself and in terms of the impact back home. This highlights the degree to which Beijing feels that it must not fail, and why its approach to the region will continue to be a driving national priority for the next few decades.

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Time China met its promises and took leading role in Afghanistan

Posted: January 6, 2018 in South China Morning Post
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A further piece for the South China Morning Post about what more China could do in Afghanistan. More on this topic over the year as well I think.

Time China met its promises and took leading role in Afghanistan
Beijing needs to move beyond rhetoric and take more concrete action to help and guide the violence-torn nation on its northern borders, writes Raffaello Pantucci

PUBLISHED : Tuesday, 02 January, 2018, 3:03pm
UPDATED : Tuesday, 02 January, 2018, 8:48pm

The year has ended with a number of banner headlines about China’s engagement in Afghanistan.

Hosting his Afghan and Pakistani counterparts, Foreign Minister Wang Yi announced China wanted to include Afghanistan in the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. At around the same time, one of the messages to emerge from the Afghan defence minister’s visit to Beijing suggested that China was going to invest in a security force in Badakhshan province.

In fact, neither of these announcements is new and while it is good that China is increasing the positive public announcements around its engagement with Kabul, 2018 needs to be the year that China follows through on its rhetoric and takes a greater leadership role in Afghanistan.

The key change in China’s engagement in Afghanistan can be traced back to 2013 when Beijing started to perceive that Washington’s talk of withdrawal was genuine. While the withdrawal was not as complete as was suggested at the time, it showed Beijing that Washington’s commitment to Afghanistan had limits. It also reminded Beijing the glaringly obvious fact that chaos in Afghanistan was something which would have direct ramifications on China. Unlike the US, on another continent, China shares a direct border with Afghanistan.

This started to shape a shift in policy from Beijing. A clearer effort towards engagement was undertaken, even going so far as to undertake joint projects with the United States. China’s political engagement and activity increased and a senior diplomat, Sun Yuxi, was appointed to act as a point of focus for China’s efforts in the country.

And around Afghanistan, growing investment flowed into neighbouring Pakistan and Central Asia as part of Xi Jinping’s keynote foreign policy vision of the Belt and Road international trade and infrastructure initiative. The elevation of these investments under the umbrella of the Belt and Road gave them much greater significance and highlighted the importance of a stable Afghanistan to deliver success in the long-term.

Yet what is surprising in the five years that have followed is the relatively limited volume of activity that has actually taken place or delivered change. China has certainly upped its game in Afghanistan, but it has not yet taken on the game-changing role it could play. Its investments have remained relatively limited and in the case of the largest investment in the country, the copper mine at Mes Aynak, has not moved forwards.

While aid has increased, Afghanistan is a country that needs a sustainable long-term economy, not just aid handouts. Big projects have failed to move forwards and deliver the tax revenues that the country hoped for and Beijing has yet to play a significant role in security terms. On peace talks, China has played a role as honest broker between Afghanistan and Pakistan, but this has so far not brought the necessary actors to the table to foster peace in the country.

Going forwards, China should focus its efforts on a two-pronged effort which focuses on delivering meaningful economic investment into the country and consolidating and leading peace efforts.

On economic investment, Beijing needs to make sure greater investment with local benefits materialises in the country. So far, aid projects have been delivered, alongside some infrastructure investment. Both of these are hugely positive and necessary, but are not providing the sort of transformative economic investment that Afghanistan needs.

Opening up direct train routes and markets is important, but China needs to make it easier for business people in both countries to move back and forth, and for goods to go between the countries. Furthermore, Beijing should incentivise small and medium sized enterprises to develop, something that could be addressed through getting China’s policy banks to extend low interest loans to firms working on or in Afghanistan.

At a larger level, creating a joint investment fund with other international partners to support the construction of infrastructure in Afghanistan would help both encourage Chinese firms to move forwards in this direction, but also help build the necessary physical wiring which will reconnect Afghanistan to its neighbourhood and realise the country’s place in the Belt and Road initiative.

At a more strategic level, Afghanistan needs to develop a bigger tax revenue base. Its natural resource sector is an obvious source that has so far not been tapped as much as it could be, in part as Chinese firms have not lived up to their initial commitments. The government should step in to fix this with companies that have already signed contracts to deliver on them, as well as support others that are exploring opportunities. Copper prices finally appear to be back on an upward trajectory, suggesting that the Mes Aynak project may become more economically interesting again.

The key complaints that companies often find in seeking to invest in Afghanistan are security and corruption. In both contexts, the Chinese government can play a greater role in supporting firms.

China already provides some support to Afghan security forces, but greater central budgetary support would help justify a greater Afghan security role for Chinese projects and investments. On corruption, if Beijing was to work with others (like the West, India and Iran) to ensure the rules of the road in Afghanistan were firmly marked out for their firms that are investing in the country, it could help transform the business environment.

Finally, Beijing should use its growing regional clout to try to bring some order and coherence to the many different regional institutions that have been developed around Afghanistan’s future. The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia, the Istanbul or Heart of Asia Process, the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation and more have all held varying levels of engagements in Afghanistan. And China itself has created or taken part in a growing constellation of bilateral, trilateral, regional and more forums which focus on Afghanistan.

Kabul needs the attention and support, but a growing problem is a lack of coherence and confusion about which format is actually delivering effective change. It is also stretching Afghanistan’s diplomatic managerial capacity. Were China to try to drive some coherent direction to this range of regional institutions then it might be possible to more effectively marshal the international community. While it will be impossible to ever create a single entity that captures everybody and everything connected with Afghanistan, narrowing down the numbers and focusing efforts would undoubtedly help.

Raffaello Pantucci is director of international security studies at the Royal United Services Institute in London

China can cope with any bumps along the way on ‘Belt and Road’

Posted: December 2, 2017 in South China Morning Post
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Catching up again on posting with an old piece for the South China Morning Post, trying to address some of the rather vacuous commentary that exists around the Belt and Road Initiative. Don’t totally agree with the choice of title, but that was of course an editorial choice. Of course more on this to come, and please check out my other site China in Central Asia for my history of work on this. A few bigger projects coming on this topic next year.

Also to catch up on some commentary, spoke to the Independent about UK’s historical offender management programme, to the Washington Post about leadership in terrorist groups, to Vox about vehicle terrorist attacks, to AFP about jihadi returnees from Syria, to the Daily Mail about equipment being used to monitor potential returnees, to Newsweek for a historical piece about the Paris attacks, to the National about terrorism trends, to Talk Radio about the Las Vegas shooting, to the Independent about the same incident, to the Washington Post after the recent New York attack, to the Wall Street Journal about terrorism in Germany, to Sky News about what social media companies are doing to counter terrorism, to the Times after minister Rory Stewart’s comments about jihadis dying in Syria, to the South China Morning Post about China’s activity in Syria and finally, to the Economist for this short video on returning foreign terrorist fighters.

Opinion: China can cope with any bumps along the way on ‘Belt and Road’ 

Beijing has long experience dealing with countries involved in its massive trade initiative and the idea that it’s not prepared for problems is misleading, writes Raffaello Pantucci

PUBLISHED : Saturday, 04 November, 2017, 3:32pm
UPDATED : Saturday, 04 November, 2017, 10:17pm

COMMENTS: 3 

There is an increasingly tired narrative about how China’s encounters with problems in countries involved in its “Belt and Road Initiative” are evidence of potential bumps along the way.

Implicit within these statements is the idea that the project (as though the belt and road is a single project) is still being developed and conceptualised, and that these problems are something for down the road. The reality is that the initiative is already under way and China is already managing the problems it is encountering.

Announced in 2013, the initiative was Chinese President Xi Jinping’s way of stamping his name on something that was already under way. The story of Chinese investment in Central Asia goes back to the first days of the collapse of the Soviet Union. As the Chinese economy grew, it slowly spilt over its western borders, following the natural flow of regional trade. As trouble in China’s Xinjiang got out of hand, an approach of using heavy economic investment to improve the region only accelerated this flow. This became the root of the Silk Road Economic Belt.

Down in southern China, the 1999 Kunming Initiative aimed to foster greater connectivity for Yunnan province, all under the auspices of former president Jiang Zemin’s Great Western Development Strategy. This became the root of the Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar Economic Corridor.

In Pakistan, as far back as 2002, former premier Zhu Rongji visited Pakistan to inaugurate work at the port in Gwadar.

Meanwhile ex-president Hu Jintao announced a surge in trade and investment with Pakistan in 2006. The bones of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor had been laid out long before Premier Li Keqiang signed a memorandum of understanding in 2013. And none of this covers the port investments in Sri Lanka and other Southeast Asian ports that have long bothered India.

There is no doubt that the agglomeration of all of these projects under a single umbrella has turbocharged them. While previously projects somewhat sputtered along, the high-level attention that is accorded by becoming belt and road initiatives, plus the investments and companies that follow, have changed their dynamics. But the key point to remember is that something was already under way. This is not, for the most part, completely fresh and brand new investment. It builds on old ideas and in some cases on old contracts.

Consequently, it is incorrect to say that China is completely new to these countries and completely new to problems they may encounter. Kyrgyzstan, for example, has faced a few moments of domestic instability. Back in 2010, rioting in the wake of a contested election and fierce interethnic clashes led to the evacuation of Chinese traders working in border trading posts. The kidnapping and death of two Chinese engineers in the Gomal Zam Dam project in Pakistan in 2004 led to a cessation of work in the country. Suffice to say, the problems that China may encounter through investing in challenging periphery countries are not new.

What has changed, however, is the scope of China’s investments and the numbers of people and assets involved. This does change the dynamic somewhat, leaving China exposed in a way that it has not had to manage thus far.

While previously, having to worry about a few people in faraway lands was largely something that could be left to local actors, increasingly this is not the case. Not only are there far more people and assets to worry about, they are vocal and angry when they get in trouble. Voices get to Beijing and stoke fires of public anger suggesting China is unable to protect its citizens, notwithstanding the massive investments it has made in its security forces.

Additionally, Chinese citizens are increasingly obvious targets. Gone are the days when Chinese were overlooked as poor beggars eking out an existence. In China’s neighbourhood, they are increasingly the big investors (whether this is true or not) and this has consequences for their image overseas.

They are now wealthy and attractive targets, both in terms of their economic value, but also in that they are increasingly the representatives of the big power that is supporting a government that may be unpopular for various reasons. All of this makes them targets for angry locals keen to protest against the state, or criminal and terrorist elements who are looking for opportunities.

There is no doubt that China is going to encounter bumps as it paves, mines and develops the belt and road projects. But these problems are not new, in much the same way as the investments themselves are building on deep conceptual and financial foundations that have come before them. The belt and road is not so much a coming concept as a current reality.

Understanding the specific nature of each branch is going to be the important determinant that people should be focusing on to understand how and whether the belt and road is worth engaging with.

It is also how China is going to comprehend how it is going to mitigate the risks that it is already managing better.

Raffaello Pantucci is director of international security studies at the Royal United Services Institute in London

China must get along with regional powers to make its New Silk Road plan work

Posted: September 5, 2017 in South China Morning Post
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Catching up posting as ever, this another piece for South China Morning Post looking at China’s problems along the Belt and Road with reference to current tensions with India potentially being an indicator of what could happen more substantially.

China must get along with regional powers to make its New Silk Road plan work

Raffaello Pantucci writes that Beijing is seeking to increase its presence in regions where it is going to need more friends than enemies, including India

Geopolitics matters. As we move deeper into a multipolar world, the importance of grand strategy will only grow. Relations between states at a strategic, economic and even emotional level will all intertwine to create a complicated web that will require sophisticated diplomacy to navigate. For China this is a particularly important lesson to learn, given its keynote “Belt and Road Initiative” that requires an acquiescent and peaceful world to deliver on its promise of building a web of trade and economic corridors emanating from China and tying the Middle Kingdom to the world. China’s current stand-off with India highlights exactly how geopolitics can disrupt Xi Jinping’s foreign policy legacy initiative.

The details of the specific transgression within this context are not entirely important. China is asserting itself in its border regions and changing facts on the ground to solidify claims. Indian push-back is based on strategic relations with Bhutan that go back a long way and a concern about how this changes Indian capabilities on the ground.

It comes at a time when relations between China and India are particularly low, with suspicion on both sides. Most analysts do not seem to think we are going to end up with conflict, but it is not clear at the moment what the off-ramp looks like. But whatever this exit looks like, we are undoubtedly going to see China finding it tougher to advance its Belt and Road Initiative through India’s perceived or real spheres of influence in South Asia.

This is something which is already visible in the broader tensions between China and India over Pakistan. China has focused on the country as a major ally that it is supporting to develop its domestic economy and improve its strategic capacity for a variety of reasons. Yet this approach directly undermines Pakistan’s perennial adversary India’s current approach of isolating Islamabad on the international stage as punishment for cross-border terrorism.

Further, the CPEC route’s cutting through disputed territories in Kashmir provides a further spur to Indian concerns. At a more tactical level, China’s refusal to allow Jaish-e-Mohammed leader Masood Azhar to be included on the list of proscribed terrorists, and its blockage of Indian entry into the Nuclear Suppliers Group, all point to a relationship with which Beijing is clearly playing an aggressive hand. India has also shown itself to be a hardball player in this regard, making public shows of proximity to the Dalai Lama, a source of major concern to China.

Of course, such a posture is either capital’s prerogative. Past relations between China and India have been fraught. The two countries have fought wars against each other. Yet at the same time, the overall tenor between the two is often in a different direction: both are proud members of the BRICS grouping (arguably the two leaders of it), and both have embraced the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. India is keen to gain a slice of the outbound Chinese investment, while China is keen to access India’s markets. Both see the opportunities and recognise that as Asian giants they have an upward trajectory over the next few decades. Together they will undoubtedly be stronger than alone.

But this positive message is thoroughly buried under the negative news around the border spat in Bhutan. Rather than being able to build a productive relationship, the two countries now find themselves at loggerheads. This is a problem for both, but has an important lesson within it for China as it seeks to advance its Belt and Road Initiative globally.

To be able to credibly realise the Belt and Road Initiative, China is going to need to have positive relations with partners on the ground, in particular major regional powers. With plans to build infrastructure, expand investments and grow physical footprints on the ground, Beijing is seeking to substantially increase its presence in regions where it is going to need more friends than enemies. When looking across South Asia, this means having a productive relationship with India. Without this, Delhi will find ways of complicating China’s approach or, more bluntly, obstructing it. Given the importance of some of the South Asian routes to the development of some of China’s poorest regions, it is important for Beijing to make sure that these corridors related to the Belt and Road plan live up to their promise.

And this lesson is one that will be relevant outside a South Asian context. For Beijing to be able to deliver on the promise of the Belt and Road Initiative, it is going to need to watch the geopolitics. Similar problems may eventually materialise with Russia, or on the seas as Beijing seeks to turn the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road into a reality.

Without friends along these routes, China is going to find it very difficult to make these visions work no matter how much money they try to throw at the problem. With nationals, companies and interests broadening and deepening, China needs an acquiescent environment and countries that are eager to work with it. Geopolitics is a chess game of many different levels, and as power becomes more diffuse on our planet, Beijing is going to have to learn how to play these games if it wants to deliver on the promise of its grand visions.

Raffaello Pantucci is director of international security studies at the Royal United Services Institute in London.

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: It’ll be tough going without friends on the New Silk Road

Why the EU doesn’t get China’s Belt and Road

Posted: May 22, 2017 in EU Observer
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A new piece on a similar theme as the last one, about the Belt and Road after the Summit in Beijing, and specifically, Europe’s views and experiences of it for an old outlet haven’t contributed to for a while, the EU Observer. Also spoke to Newsweek about the ISIS aspect of the Trump leak about aviation threats to the Russians, and did a longer conversation with RFE/RL’s Majlis podcast as part of a panel discussion with Bruce Pannier of RFE/RL; Przemtslow Ozierski, the deputy director of the Central Asia Strategic Center for Analysis, Dialogue and Development; and, Nicolas de Pedro (@nicolasdepedro), a research fellow in charge of the post-Soviet space at the Barcelona Centre for International Affairs.

Why the EU doesn’t get China’s Belt and Road

By 

LONDON, 19. MAY, 11:56

Chinese leader Xi Jinping trumpeted his foreign policy vision – the Belt and Road – to great fanfare this past week.

Yet a consistently discordant note was heard from European reporting around the event, with officials talking to press about their lack of understanding of the project. While some of their concerns were understandable, there was an element of missing the point.

  • The symbolic first arrival of a Chinese train in Germany (Photo: DB Schenker)

Xi Jinping may talk in terms of a project, but in reality what we are seeing laid out is a grand vision: one that Beijing is using to re-shape its engagement with the world.

For Europe, it is important to figure out exactly what this means. Otherwise, it could both miss out on an opportunity, and create a series of potential problems with a relationship that will continue to be important going forwards.

First, it is important to dispel what the Belt and Road is not. It is not a giant aid project. Nor has China particularly ever pretended that it was.

Leadership will get caught up in grandiloquent language about how the project is a great gift to humanity. However, in reality, it is a vision of re-connecting the world in a manner that will support Chinese trade flows and help Chinese companies go out into the world.

At its core, it is about helping to develop China’s underdeveloped regions – parts of the country that are deeply disconnected from its bustling ports.

Second, it is important to understand what is actually happening. Not all of the strands of the Belt and Road are new, nor are they all the same.

What has been happening in Central Asia for almost two decades, re-branded as Belt and Road, is not the same or as important domestically to China as newly advanced projects in parts of Africa or Eastern Europe.

At the same time, some corridors seem to be advancing far more slowly: the Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar Economic Corridor (BCIM) is one that has been talked about since the late 1990s, but has only now actually moved into clear action across its entire route.

The point is, while the Belt and Road is discussed by Beijing in the same light, the reality on the ground is very different in each and every case.

Third, it is a vision with a long timeline. China is thinking to a very long horizon. In typical fashion for a centrally planned economy, it is considering things into the future and not the short- to medium-term eye-line with which most Western governments operate.

So, when the country looks to build train links across the continent that make little economic sense now, it could be that the lens we are looking at them through is too short.

Once China is able to develop its western regions and create industrial and manufacturing bases out there, it might suddenly become more economically sensible to put goods on trains across the continent.

Fourth, not everything is expected to work – this is a leadership vision and not a project.

The Belt and Road was first christened by Xi during a set of speeches in Astana and Jakarta. Laid out then, they were outlined as a pair of concepts that would slowly catch on and become the defining foreign policy concept that Xi Jinping would offer the world.

Conceptual Nature

The illogical nature of a Belt being over land, while a Road went to sea highlighted the conceptual nature of what was being laid out. In fact, the seeds of the concept could already be found in previous administrations – Jiang Zemin had his “Develop the West” concept, and Hu Jintao’s administration was the one that started up the idea of refocusing on Xinjiang and developing its relations with its neighbours.

Both of these served as ideological godfathers to the Belt and Road, which in essence took this model and internationalised it.

But the point is that none of these were specific projects. They were rather broad policy directives that were launched out of Beijing which were then followed up and pushed out by the many institutions in China, to varying degrees of success.

The BCIM was born under Jiang Zemin and went nowhere, and while the Hu Jintao initiative with Xinjiang and Central Asia was more successful, there are a few projects along the route that have failed to deliver as they were intended.

None of this is that surprising, as, ultimately, the leadership’s announcements should be assessed as a central policy direction rather than detailed plans.

Initially, when the speeches were delivered, there was no specific policy planning behind them.

Now that the concepts have firmly caught on, almost everything has become Belt and Road – in part this is because the concept is so broad (so everything fits under it), but also it is a way for everything to try to connect with the bright vision laid out by the leadership.

This includes ideas and projects that have a very limited connection to the actual Belt and Road – there is an almost inexhaustible list of Chinese regions that have defined themselves as the crucial points on the Belt and Road.

Within this, not everything is going to work (because it never does). But this is not a concern, as ultimately what has been offered is a concept rather than a project, meaning that it will not ultimately fail, as no specific parameter for success has been laid out.

EU Engagement

All of this is essential for European policymakers and thinkers to understand.

If they are to properly engage with the vision, they need to first understand it in granular detail – something that is eminently doable through the numerous reports that have been published, or by undertaking research themselves.

They then need to appreciate what the vision actually is and the timelines to which it is operating, and then finally focus on which aspects do correspond with their specific interests.

China’s biggest problem with this vision is that it requires considerable support, consent and contributions from the countries along and at the end of the routes, and those that are more likely to succeed are those with supportive partners.

Consequently, Europe can choose which aspects it wants to engage with and simply ignore the others. This will not necessarily stop them from happening, but they are not realities Europe has to engage with if it does not want to.

The key in all of this is for Europe to decide exactly what its strategy towards China is going to be, and what it is that it wants to do to engage with this century’s rising power. In the Belt and Road they are facing Xi Jinping’s foreign policy legacy.

Given that the conceptual outline is focused on the Eurasian continent, Europe has an opportunity to re-craft its relations with China in a way that connects with the leadership and potentially has a game-changing impact across the continent the two powers share.

It is not enough for European officials to simply tell the press they do not understand the Belt and Road – the vision is clear enough, but the point is to decide how to engage with it.

Raffaello Pantucci is director of international security studies at the Royal United Services Institute,a think tank in London

China: Understanding Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative

Posted: May 15, 2017 in Royal United Services Institute
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Back on my China in Eurasia theme, this time a piece timed to land at my institutional home RUSI to coincide with the big Belt and Road Forum taking place in Beijing. Lots more on this topic to come, and if you want more have a look at the China in Central Asia site.

Separately, spoke to the Times about returning foreign fighters to the UK from Syria, to Politico about Brexit and counter-terrorism, and the Mail on Sunday about Khalid Ali, the arrested Westminster terror plotter.

China: Understanding Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative

A great deal of rhetoric is expended over China’s gigantic investment initiatives. Still, many of the economic projects are real, and Western governments will be well advised to understand their purpose.

The Middle Kingdom is asserting its centrality in global affairs by hosting the Silk Road summit this weekend. Aimed at showcasing President Xi Jinping’s ‘Belt and Road’ vision, the conference will bring together leaders, officials and experts from around the world.

Apart from the signing of some large deals and some affirmations about China’s eagerness towards free trade, the summit’s real importance is in the message it sends about China’s place in the world.

First announced in 2013 in a set of speeches in Astana and Jakarta, the One Belt, One Road (now renamed the Belt and Road Initiative) is at its root about putting a new name on a series of initiatives that built on existing Chinese investment and trade relationships.

The decision to first focus the initiative on Central Asia was a reflection of the fact that the region served as a conduit for China’s decades-long approach to investment around the world.

With a model of building infrastructure using Chinese firms deployed to deliver on loans provided by the country’s financial institutions to open up trade and markets, Beijing’s investments in Central Asia since the end of the Cold War provide a model for the globalised Belt and Road Initiative.

For countries along the routes, there is the difficulty of understanding and connecting with the Chinese investments in a manner that is useful to them, so that they are not simply roads passing through their territories.

For outside powers, such as the UK, there is the challenge of comprehending where they sit in the broader vision, as well as how they can connect with these projects along the routes.

To understand these issues better, there are three key aspects to remember. First, the concept is not a monolith. Each of the strands of the Belt and Road are different; at different stages of development, advanced to differing degrees and of variable importance.

In some cases, China is building on a long history of investment, while in others China is starting from a very low base of investment. It is important to distinguish between the rhetoric and the reality in each case.

Second, it is important to remember that this is not a giant aid project; China is making commercial investments in many cases. In some, the loans have been offered at reasonable rates and the implementing partner is contractually obliged to be Chinese. Looking at the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank projects, they are in fact put out to open tender.

It is only in very few cases that the investment being offered acts as pure aid. China is still developing its aid profile, and this is key in understanding what China is doing under the Belt and Road.

The ultimate aim is to develop a series of trade and economic corridors using Chinese companies (thereby helping them go out into the world) to help China develop domestically. This is fundamentally a selfish vision aimed at advancing Chinese interests.

Third, it is important to think of the vision with a longer horizon that we are used to considering. At the moment, there is little economic logic to placing goods on trains from China to go to Europe: the route is far more expensive than going by sea and the highest value goods that need to get across land quicker need to travel by air.

Consequently, the much-vaunted trains which are travelling across the Eurasian landmass bringing goods between Europe and China are for the most part going full one way and empty back.

Furthermore, they are being subsidised by Beijing or the regional governments from where they depart. They do not currently make economic sense.

But it is possible that this is looking at them on too short a timeline. Seen from Beijing, the idea is to lay these tracks and develop these routes so that once China’s western regions become more developed and productive, they can take advantage of these routes.

Over time, what seems a short-term loss may turn into a longer-term artery of international trade. The point is that it is possible that the horizon with which the Belt and Road is currently considered is too limited.

In fact, it is something with a much longer timeline and is fundamentally, seen from Beijing, about re-establishing China as the centre of a global network of trade and economic routes that will help re-wire international trade.

These three elements are essential to bear in mind when outside powers are seeking to connect with the vision. It is important to understand each corridor in detail, to focus on the commercial opportunities that the corridors will create and to think with a longer horizon that most governments usually consider.

Once this learning has been absorbed and considered, it will be easier to understand how to connect with China’s vision – something that is as relevant to countries such as the UK at one end of the route as those that are along the routes.

For the Chinese investments are happening, notwithstanding the hyperbole that will be on display this weekend; money is being spent, and ground is being broken.

Banner image: The first goods train service from China to the UK arrives at DB Cargo’s rail freight terminal in Barking, East London. Courtesy of PA Images

Britain and Asia in a Trumpian World: Only Connect

Posted: December 2, 2016 in Royal United Services Institute
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Slightly delayed posting of a new piece for my institutional home RUSI looking at how the UK should connect with Asia in the new Trumpian world. It struck me as interesting that while the US elected a President who spoke of isolation and scrapping treaties, the Chinese Premier tracked the new Silk Roads in China’s ongoing burst of international connectivity. Separately, spoke to the Guardian about the latest possible death of Mokhtar Belmokhtar.

Britain and Asia in a Trumpian World: Only Connect

As the US appears set to limit its global involvement under President-elect Donald Trump and China intensifies its engagements across the world, an opportunity has arisen for Britain. It is one the UK government should seize.
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The contrast could hardly be greater: as the US voted in a president who has not committed himself to free trade and is keen on closed borders, Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang crossed the new Silk Road from China to Europe through Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Latvia, promoting precisely the opposite ideas.

And with concrete results. In Gwadar, Pakistan, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Chief of Army Staff Raheel Sharif watched as the first load of products to make the journey down the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor from western China leave for the seas. As America closes in on itself, Eurasia is opening up ever more. And the British government, which has not missed these trends, needs to develop a more strategic approach if it is going to effectively position itself to take advantage of them.

In stark contrast to the apocalyptic vision of international relations which seems to be associated with US President-elect Donald Trump, China’s economy is pushing itself ever-more aggressively into the world. Chinese President Xi Jinping’s ‘Belt and Road’ concept has become an all-encompassing foreign policy vision, espousing trade and connectivity with talk of the ‘revival of silk roads’ and ‘connectivity’. Nowhere is this clearer than in Eurasia, where China is re-drawing the economic and geopolitical map, as it steers money, companies and people into re-establishing Eurasian continental links.

Li’s tour in many ways mirrored Xi’s in June, when he travelled to Serbia, Poland and then Uzbekistan. And while the announcement of the first load of trucks making it from Kashgar in western China to the coast in Baluchistan was actually far more symbolic than economically significant, it did show how ‘Belt and Road’ connectivity rhetoric was producing results.

It is on this divergence of global attitudes between a retreating US and a thrusting China that UK and other middle powers would do well to focus. A simplification, perhaps, but clearly something is fundamentally shifting and in a world of growing giants, the UK needs to focus on how it can best position itself against these shifting tectonic plates.

The answer for London is a need for greater and closer engagement. With the US, it is likely too early to decide on how to deal with a Trumpian America. However, with China, the answer is to find ways to connect with this surge of Eurasian connectivity. At the same time, London has also to find ways of engaging more seriously with other Asian partners by taking advantage of the broader global shift taking place. Asia is a story of multiple rising giants, and the UK is well regarded by many of them. Britain has long under-performed in its engagement in Asian strategic and security affairs and now is the moment to take a more substantial posture on the issues that preoccupy its partners there.

The current British government has already started to make noises in this direction: while Li was crossing the continent and the US was voting for Trump, Prime Minister Theresa May was in India and Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond hosted the latest Economic and Financial Dialogue with China in London. These moves need to be matched by a more serious engagement in regional strategic and security affairs.

Both China and India realise their growing weight in international affairs and want to engage with the UK as a serious power, but are often concerned that London does not take their strategic concerns seriously. This is likely less true for China than India. However, at the same time, the fact the UK has such an enhanced and visible engagement with China is having a detrimental knock-on effect on other Asian partners for whom China is a competitor and antagonist.

There are two important aspects from this for the UK to note. First, London needs to establish a more comprehensive and strategic dialogue with Asia. This means not just paying lip service to regional security questions, but playing a more forward role in engaging and understanding them. British diplomatic, analysis and security personnel across Asia and in government offices in London need to be enhanced and bolstered so that policymakers have a more substantial understanding of Asian dynamics and a demonstrable desire to engage in them.

Second, the UK needs to move forwards into playing a more engaged strategic role. Rather than continuing as a passive observer of regional dynamics, the UK should move into a position where it can build on its existing relationships to play the role of regional peace-broker.

To focus on Eurasia in particular: the current Chinese-driven surge of connectivity has the potential to be a collective net boon, but at the moment it is only partially working. Hiccups such as regional neighbours refusing to let products travel across their borders, or China being unable to resolve long-standing historical tensions, have hindered the smooth progress of the Belt and Road concept. If London stepped in to find a unique role as broker and diplomat between regional powers, it could help to encourage the aspiration of connectivity which serves a broader group of nations than just China.

Looking at South Asia, the UK’s relationships with both India and Pakistan place it in a unique position to try to lower tensions. Admittedly not an easy task, and one that has been attempted in fits and starts for some time, but a more focused effort on both sides of the border might help show a level of strategic seriousness that the UK is accused of missing in its current pursuit of trade deals.

By stepping forward to play this role – a position that may become vacant if Trump’s isolationist America happens – the UK will be able to carve a new role for itself in the world, one which benefits more from Asian growth without being too openly mercantilist.

The UK has been somewhat rudderless strategically since the referendum in June to leave the EU.

The election of Trump has further accentuated this perception, and there is a palpable concern about what might comes next. But the world has kept turning, and Chinese-driven Eurasian connectivity continues its inexorable surge. If the UK wants to truly benefit from this shifting world order, it needs to rapidly define where exactly it will sit and what it will bring to the table. Engaging more seriously and substantially in Asian strategic affairs would be an important place to start.

 

 

China’s development lenders embrace multilateral co-operation

Posted: November 2, 2016 in Financial Times
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New piece for the Financial Times excellent Beyond BRICS blog, this time providing an evaluation of the links between the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), the Silk Road Fund and Xi Jinping’s ‘Belt and Road Initiative.’ A lot more on this general topic on my parallel China in Central Asia site. This aside, spoke to the Telegraph about the recent terror attack in Quetta, Pakistan.

China’s Development Lenders Embrace Multilateral Co-operation

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There has been much speculation on the role of the Silk Road Fund (SRF) and Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) in China’s outward investment push.They are both instruments created by Beijing to provide economic firepower and bring international credibility to the ‘Belt and Road’ vision that has become President Xi Jinping’s keynote foreign policy concept. But in reality they have both undertaken a series of investments that, while substantial and linked to ‘Belt and Road’ countries, pale in size next to China’s overall outward investments.

While the AIIB has quite clearly been subsumed into the ‘Belt and Road’ project, the SRF has so far largely focused on commercial projects which are focused on profit rather than national strategy.

AIIB has so far made two sets of project announcements. The first were announced on June 24, 2016 and included a $165m loan for a power distribution project in Bangladesh, a $216.5m loan co-financed with the World Bank for a national slum upgrade in Indonesia, a $100m loan co-financed with the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) to finance the Shorkot-Khanewal section of the M-4 motorway in Pakistan and a $27.5m loan for the Dushanbe-Uzbekistan Border Road Improvement Project in Tajikistan, co-financed with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD).

A second set were announced in September, including a $300m loan for Tarbela 5 hydropower project in Pakistan, co-financed by the World Bank and a $20m loan to finance a 225 MW power plant in Myanmar, a project which is set to possibly receive a further $58m from the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and $42.2m from the Asia Development Bank (ADB).

Of these projects, the only one that is uniquely funded by the AIIB is the power grid project in Bangladesh. All of the others are co-financed, or more accurately, the AIIB has bought into existing projects. Another significant detail is that with the exception of the Indonesian project, all of the projects are ones that can be captured under the broader ‘Belt and Road’ vision – which has three principal strands pushing out across Eurasia: China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), Silk Road Economic Belt (SREB), and Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar Economic Corridor (BCIM).

Of the $829m the bank has invested so far, $400m has been invested into projects which fit under CPEC, $27.5m into SREB, and $185m into projects which could fit under the BCIM.

In other words, almost 75 per cent of the AIIB’s first projects have been steered towards existing Chinese economic visions. And in many ways, the Indonesian project could also be captured under this banner, given the fact that Indonesia fits into the under-developed 21st Century Maritime Silk Road concept as well (and was the country in October 2016 that Xi announced the concept in the first place).

There is very little distance between the AIIB and Beijing’s ‘Belt and Road.’ And in fact, the parts of the ‘Belt and Road’ it is feeding are those parts which are going to ultimately have a resonance on China’s most under-developed regions that are the ultimate focus of the ‘Belt and Road.’ It is therefore hard, on the basis of its first projects, not to consider the bank as a tool of the ‘Belt and Road’ rather than a new independent financial institution advancing general regional development goals.

The Silk Road Fund is a more obvious tool than the AIIB. With a total capital of $40bn, the first $10bn was made up with money from the Chinese State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE), which accounted for 65 per cent of the initial funds, Export-Import Bank (accounting for 15 per cent), China Development Bank (accounting for 5 per cent) and the China Investment Corporation (accounting for 15 per cent).

Established specifically to ‘promote common development and prosperity of China and the other countries and regions involved in the Belt and Road Initiative,’ the Fund is a commercial entity that is focused on projects that will generate returns.

Having laid out this logic, the Fund’s first investments have followed these principles, starting with an investment of $1.65bn in April 2015 to build the Karot hydropower project in North East Pakistan.

In September 2015 it announced it would purchase 9.9 per cent of the Russian Yamal liquefied gas field for $1.2bn, and more recently it was revealed it had explored putting almost $2bn into buying Glencore’s Vasilkovskoye gold mine in Kazakhstan.

It ultimately lost that deal to another pair of Chinese buyers. Outside these obvious ‘Belt and Road’ deals, the Fund has also invested in ChemChina to purchase Italian tire maker Pirelli, invested $100m into the China International Capital Corp (CICC) a state investment bank that prior to its initial public offering (IPO) in November 2015 was seen as taking losses internationally, and finally pledging some $300m to the IPO of China Energy Engineering Corp (CEEC) an international power plant construction firm.

To understand the ‘Belt and Road’ logic of the CEEC-Silk Road Fund investment, it is instructive to look at Mr Xi’s visit to Serbia in June 2016, seven months after the IPO announcement. Mr Xi was present at the signing of an MOU between the CEEC, the Silk Road Fund, China Environmental Energy Investment Ltd and the Serbian Ministry of Energy and Mining. The MoU laid the foundations for CEEC to undertake further energy projects in Serbia, joining already advanced CEEC projects in Lithuania and Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Taken as a whole, the Silk Road Fund is a heavier investor in ‘Belt and Road’ projects than AIIB. While the AIIB’s announced deals add up to $829m, the SRF’s amount to at least $3.25bn (not including the Pirelli deal, the exact numbers of which are not immediately available). In addition, the Fund has been reported as considering an investment of between €5-10bn into the European Fund for Strategic Investments, or the so-called Juncker Plan.

But all of this pales next to China’s overall outward investment numbers. The Ministry of Commerce announced outward investment last year at $145.67bn and EY, a consultancy, has predicted that this year’s total will surpass $170bn.

Taken against this background, the SRF and AIIB are clearly minnows. But they are minnows which have focused on national interest, something that highlights the degree to which the broader ‘Belt and Road’ is aimed at advancing national interest rather than being a benevolent vision for Eurasia.

It also illustrates to outsiders that to properly understand how to connect with the ‘Belt and Road’, there is a need to understand China’s broader international ambitions under the vision.

Raffaello Pantucci is director of international security studies at RUSI, a think tank based in London.

How New is the Belt and Road?

Posted: October 9, 2016 in China Policy Institute: Analysis
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A short blogpost for a new outlet, the rather impressive China Policy Institute Analysis blog which is linked to the University of Nottingham. Touches on a couple of topics which are going to be a focus for the immediate future, the ‘Belt and Road’ and the BCIM in particular. As ever, much more on these topics to be found at China in Central Asia.

How New is the Belt and Road?

Chiang Sheng Yang, Presenter, Phoenix Satellite Television Holdings, Hong Kong SAR, Zhang Bingjun, Corporate Chairman, Tianjin TEDA Construction Group, People's Republic of China, Ian Bremmer, President, Eurasia Group, USA; Young Global Leader Alumnus; Global Agenda Council on Geo-economics, Jin Liqun, President, Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, Beijing, Li Daokui, Dean, Schwarzman College, Tsinghua University, People's Republic of China; Global Agenda Council on Global Economic Imbalances and Benedikt Sobotka, Chief Executive Officer, Eurasian Resources Group, Luxembourg at the World Economic Forum - Annual Meeting of the New Champions in Tianjin, People's Republic of China 2016. Copyright by World Economic Forum / Sikarin Thanachaiary

 Copyright by World Economic Forum / Sikarin Thanachaiary

Written by Raffaello Pantucci. 

Back in the late 1990s, then-PRC President and Communist Party leader Jiang Zemin noticed that the country was facing an imbalance. Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms had opened up the coastal cities, transforming them into beacons of international industry and development. Cities like Shanghai, Shenzhen and Guangzhou were on their way to becoming international hubs. And yet looking inland, the difference was stark, with parts of the centre or border regions with neighbouring Southeast, South and Central Asia remaining poor and underdeveloped. Seeking to rectify this, and in part to help Chinese companies go out, Jiang Zemin instigated a ‘Develop the West’ or ‘Great Western Development’ strategies.

Academics like Zheng Xinli came back from their travels along China’s borderlands with southeast Asia with ideas of developing multilateral institutions that would help address one of the key problems in the region, a lack of infrastructure to help accelerate trade between parts of the world that were already deeply economically interdependent. To China’s west, the problems were political and had a security bent to them thanks to the proximity of Afghanistan, historical conflicts with Russia and an angry resident Uighur population. As the Soviet Union fell apart, China accelerated a process of border demarcation going on between itself, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan into a process called the ‘Shanghai Five’ – named after the city in which they met. The priority was largely to define what China’s borders were, with a later attempt to move the discussion towards other economic and political goals.

To China’s south, the scenario looked different. In the absence of a collapsing superpower with which China had fought conflicts, Beijing instead found itself confronted by a series of underdeveloped nations (including ones with which it had fought conflicts in some cases) that nonetheless had deep economic and ethnic links back and forth across China’s equally underdeveloped borderlands. In August 1999, over one hundred academics and experts from China, India, Burma and Bangladesh gathered together in Kunming for a conference at the Yunnan Academy of Social Sciences (YASS). The outline for the conference was laid out as:

  1. Practical and strategically significance for the regional cooperation among China, India, Bangladesh and Burma;
  1. Feasibility of cooperation in the economic, trade and technological cooperation among China (Yunnan), India, Bangladesh and Burma (including industry, agriculture, tourism and finance);
  1. Study on the construction of communication channels and networks among China, India, Bangladesh and Burma (including the opening and reconstructing roads, air lines, water routes and railways);
  1. Prospect and basis for the economic cooperation among China, India, Bangladesh and Burma;
  1. Open-door policies and trade and investment environment for China, India, Bangladesh and Burma;
  1. Construct the framework for regional cooperation in China, India, Bangladesh and Burma.

Its conclusions were similar and thus was laid out the framework for the Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar Economic Corridor (BCIM), or the ‘Kunming Initiative’. Focusing on improving infrastructure and opening markets, the BCIM was dreamed up as a way of developing China through opening of markets, building infrastructure, and enhancing cooperation between China and its border nations.

The vision was one that was actually suggested a few months earlier in March 1999 at the 9th National Party Congress in Beijing by President Jiang Zemin. Crystallized in speeches delivered later in the year and put on the front page of the People’s Daily on June 19 1999, the ‘Great Western Development Strategy’ was a vision that suggested the ‘time was ripe’ to speed up the development of the central and western regions’ and that this ‘should become a major strategic task for the party.’

In other words, the Chinese Communist Party was to throw itself into working to develop the left behind ‘western’ (put in parentheses as the logic of ‘west’ was substantially stretched to anything not on China’s coast), and the ‘Kunming Initiative’ was to push this concept out as a trade and economic corridor that swept through Myanmar and Bangladesh to India.

All of which sounds a lot like the current vision that is being advanced for the ‘Belt and Road’, where we see Beijing pushing out trade and economic corridors in every direction as a way of helping not only China’s companies go out into the world, but also to help develop China’s under-developed ‘western regions’, be this in central China, Xinjiang, Tibet or Yunnan. Given the problems in Xinjiang, it is maybe unsurprising that the Central Asian strand of the ‘Belt and Road’ – the ‘Silk Road Economic Belt’ that Xi Jinping christened when he visited Astana in September 2013 – has found itself front and center, but it is also the one which is building on a well-established political track which Beijing had been laying since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

There is an additional problem with the BCIM which is that it ends with a power, India, with which Beijing continues to have tense relations that are complicated by China’s intimate embrace through another strand of the ‘Belt and Road’ with India’s persistent enemy Pakistan (the $46 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor). This tension alongside the persistent problems of development, governance and criminality that are encountered in Myanmar and Bangladesh, all serve to illustrate why China has had a harder time of things in Southeast Asia.

But the BCIM and its history do serve to illustrate that the ‘Belt and Road’ vision that is on its way to becoming the signature foreign policy initiative of the Xi Jinping administration is not in fact as new as it may sound. Rather, it is a case of an old model being re-attempted in a new cast. And as the ‘Belt and Road’ continues to remain a nebulous vision rather than a specific project, its conceptual embrace becomes ever tighter and it drags in historical projects like the BCIM into its all-encompassing horizon. During their July 2015 meeting on the fringes of the joint SCO and BRICS meeting Russia hosted in Ufa, Presidents Narendra Modi and Xi Jinping confirmed the proximity of the two visions. As reported in the official Chinese read-out of the meeting:

‘Both countries should also join efforts to promote the construction of Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), New Development Bank (NDB) of BRICS nations and the Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar Economic Corridor (BCIM), and discuss on effectively connecting China’s initiative of the “Belt and Road” with related initiatives of India, so as to achieve mutually beneficial cooperation and common development.’

The BCIM has therefore been brought into the broader ‘Belt and Road’ vision, highlighting the degree to which its goals are interchangeable with the approach being practiced by Beijing in the modern ‘march west’ strategy as laid out by Xi Jinping. Thus bringing in full circle the repetition that is inherent within the current vision and the historical one, and showing how this approach is in fact one that China has attempted before. Whether this one will succeed where previous have not is unclear at this point, but when one considers the vast sums that Beijing is able to muster and deploy under the auspices of the current approach, it seems that the current ‘Belt and Road’ will leave an indelible impression. One that may even help imprint the BCIM onto Southeast Asia in its wake.

Raffaello Pantucci is Director of International Security Studies at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI). He is also the co-creator of http://www.chinaincentralasia.com and is currently working on a number of projects looking at the Belt and Road through a number of different lenses. Image credit: CC by World Economic Forum/flickr.

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