Macroscope | The new ‘Great Game’ in infrastructure lacks a game plan

The new “Great Game” being played in and beyond the Eurasian continent by the world’s major powers is ostensibly about competition in infrastructure building. But it is also about manoeuvring for economic and geo-strategic influence as “infrastructure wars” become a proxy for wider battles.

Europe’s entry into the game with a plan called “The European Way to Connectivity” may or may not represent a challenge to China’s Belt and Road Initiative but the fact is that China’s pioneering effort has woken the world up to the full economic and strategic implications of infrastructure.

It has exposed the fact that neither state nor market capitalism as they operate at present can hope to secure the huge resources needed for the financing of infrastructure investment, and that a new model is needed. In this sense at least, the contest among great powers promises to be salutary.

Unlike the 19th century contest between Britain and Russia for control over Central and Southern Asia, the China-initiated Great Game has drawn in the US, Japan, India and Australia as well now as the European Union. It is thus a global challenge that requires global solutions.

It all began in 2013 when President Xi Jinping announced what was known at first as the One Belt, One Road plan (later renamed Belt and Road Initiative) to link China with Europe via Central Asia and through a Maritime Silk Road extending the network to North Africa and the Middle East.

For a while China appeared to have the field to itself as it began signing bilateral deals with some of the 60 or so countries that could be included eventually in the belt and road plan. But then in 2016 Japanese and Indian leaders came up with a plan for an Asia-Africa Growth Corridor (AAGC) as a counter to the belt and road strategy.