Outside In | Why war in Ukraine won’t derail China’s belt and road ambitions
- While the Ukraine invasion has disrupted freight traffic, it is a mistake to think of any belt and road project in terms of a year or two
- To take the long view, the initiative is a 100-year strategy and China has too big a stake in global trade to let Russia stand in the way
“Putin’s war has killed China’s Eurasian railway dreams”, ran the headline last month in Foreign Policy. Meanwhile, Nathan Hudson at the University of North Texas was even firmer in a widely circulated Eurasianet report: “Not only is the war starting to cost Beijing lost trade revenue, it is also turning infrastructure investments into white elephants.”
Let me respond with the famous misquote of Mark Twain: “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.” And I would go further: such reports are just wrong.
For sure, the Eurasian rail link, which China is confident will play a critical role in opening up the long-ignored Central Asian economies on China’s Western borders, has seen traffic disrupted.
Indeed, the invasion probably provides vindication of President Xi Jinping’s ambitious 2013 initiative to develop stronger infrastructure links with China’s economic partners around the world. This network may provide important stability as we face a suddenly unsafe world.
The first error is to think of any belt and road project in terms of a year or two, or as a self-standing investment. The Belt and Road Initiative is a 100-year vision for China’s relations with the world, in particular across the Eurasian land mass and into Africa.