Track records of trade blocs is mixed at best – so Belt and Road grouping has to be ultra-careful in its planning and purpose
As initiative is targeted at mega-infrastructural projects – some inherently difficult to build – cost over-runs will be inevitable and the whole effort could be prone to ‘white elephant-ism’
No one likes a party pooper, but every so often someone in the room with a long memory punctures the celebratory atmosphere with recollections of things that have happened in the past and thus dampens the party mood.
Shamefacedly, I am about to become that very person, even though I missed this week’s big party in Beijing, celebrating the Belt and Road Forum.
It’s a fair bet most of the attendees would not have welcomed a recitation of the rather sad history of regional cooperation alliances, putative trade blocs and rather more profound regional economic groupings.
What almost all of these associations have in common is that they amounted to much less than they were promised to amount to and, in many cases to practically nothing at all.
By way of illustration, readers are challenged to recall any of the ‘stellar’ achievements of, for example, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (which first consisted of founding member countries China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzsrtan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan) which apparently has security as its focus.