Why the West’s attacks on China’s Belt and Road Initiative are futile

China’s infrastructure initiative has attracted criticism and inspired a cacophony of competing plans, including the G20’s economic corridor
But fundamental needs are getting lost in the rush to conjure up new visions, which has added to global tensions – without denting the belt and road’s popularity

Raffaello Pantucci

Published: 5:30am, 21 Sep 2023

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A decade after its announcement in Kazakhstan, China’s Belt and Road Initiative continues to dominate international conversation. At the recent G20 summit in New Delhi, a push to create a new corridor from India to Europe via the Middle East – touted by US President Joe Biden as “a big deal” – was widely seen as a counter to China’s infrastructure initiative.

Yet the new corridor would cross routes already considered part of the belt and road and has created tensions among Group of 20 members. The race to tout new routes and connectivity continues to generate spurious comparisons while missing the actual impact (if any) of the projects.

President Xi Jinping’s speeches in Kazakhstan and Indonesia in 2013 set in motion a global rush to conjure up new visions for connectivity. From the United States and G7-driven Build Back Better World to the European Union’s Global Gateway, a growing number of proposals have been thrown up in an effort to reclaim the narrative of international connectivity.

China was not the first country to put forward the concept of infrastructure connectivity. In 1993, the EU linked up with newly independent countries across the Caucasus and Central Asia to create the Transport Corridor Europe Caucasus Asia. The Asian Development Bank also has the Central Asia Regional Economic Cooperation Programme to foster connectivity between China and its Eurasian neighbours.

Going back further, the idea of an “Iron Silk Road” was first posited in the 1960s through the United Nations to create a rail link from Singapore to Turkey.

But it is the Belt and Road Initiative that is animating things now, largely because of the vast sums of money involved and the grand concepts put forward by China. It is also because the initiative is interpreted as a keynote Chinese offering at a time of geopolitical conflict with the West. And it continues to find receptive audiences in the developing world.

As a result, Western leaders are eager to suggest alternatives, seeking to defeat or stymie the Chinese vision in some way.

Paradoxically, this is happening amid international discussion of decoupling and “de-risking” – a narrative suggesting that globalisation is waning as different blocs size up each other. The world is pushing for new routes while seeking to rethink old ones.

The result has been messy. Putting forward the idea of new corridors can neglect the past and expose fissures. Turkey, for example, has been irked at its exclusion from the economic corridor proposed at the G20 summit, having been pushing, through the renamed Organisation of Turkic States, to show that it is at the heart of transport corridors through Central Asia, the Caucasus and Europe.

There have also been efforts to highlight the Belt and Road Initiative’s failures. Beijing has tried to mitigate some of the problems. Clearly, years of exaggerated loans to aid-dependent countries have left China holding a lot of bad debt as countries struggle to repay loans on projects whose commercial (or environmental) viability were not necessarily tested properly.

02:58

China announces US$3.8 billion Belt and Road expansion in Central Asia

But the broader concept has not gone away, and is still enshrined in the Chinese Communist Party’s constitution. Next month’s belt and road forum is likely to be a celebration of success, rather than a timid reflection on problems.

The key point is that fundamental needs are getting lost in the rush to conjure up new corridors and advance fresh visions. The reality is that many of these routes will not offer anything very different from what is already there. And, in many cases, the commercial viability may still be problematic compared with existing routes.

For example, seaborne transport costs remain a fraction of overland prices in most cases, suggesting that this endless stream of proposed routes across the Eurasian heartland still has some way to go before being able to effectively compete against the sea lanes they seek to displace.

06:32

China’s Belt and Road, 10 years on

And while each leader likes to have his or her own vision, the truth is that few will remain in power long enough to deliver it through to profitability. This is not to say that everything is a failure, but rather to highlight that real connectivity takes decades to deliver success and so the current metrics are unrealistic in terms of showing us what is really going on.

At its core, the push towards greater international connectivity is positive. Much of the world remains unconnected and, in the longer term, greater connectivity will bring prosperity to more people. Yet, the competing visions and seeming need to outdo each other does little to support this and instead just adds to global tensions.

All the negative attention on the Belt and Road Initiative has failed to dent its popularity around the world. Continuing to offer new ideas is a waste of time when most recipient countries would like all projects – whether Chinese or some other – to proceed.

The belt and road’s problems will be exposed through its natural deficiencies. Rather than talking it down, the West should focus on simply delivering infrastructure and investment where it can, and where it is most needed. Continuing with the negative sentiment will only backfire.

Raffaello Pantucci is a senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in London and a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) in Singapore