My Take | Belt and Road Initiative is spreading science and technology across Global South
- The 10th anniversary of the massive global infrastructure programme recalls how it is working closely with developing countries to acquire much-needed technical know-how for growth and development
According to the standard Western narrative, China’s Belt and Road Initiative is all about laying debt traps and building white elephants for developing countries.
The malice to China and parental condescension to those countries are too obvious. Let those countries, which have long been and still are exploited by Western states, decide for themselves. Surely, they can choose their own partners and reject suitors if they want.
As Beijing this month celebrated the anniversary of the massive infrastructure programme, one significant aspect of it deserves far greater appreciation – the spread, promotion and funding of science and technology across much of the Global South.
In western Europe and North America, as research institutes, either voluntarily or under pressure from their governments, scale back or even sever collaborations with their Chinese counterparts, China has been redrawing global science by building a “New Silk Road” for science and technology with middle- and low-income countries.
While collaborations with the West, now dwindling, often involve cutting-edge science, those with the Global South usually involve more practical or life-saving technologies such as extracting clean water from waste and increasing crop yields.