Vision or mirage? Cashed up and keen, China faces long haul along new Silk Road

by Shi Jiangtao in South China Morning Post, May 18, 2017
The red carpets have been rolled up, the visiting leaders have left and cash has been committed.
On the face of it, Beijing’s diplomatic extravaganza to galvanise support for its global trade and infrastructure outreach programme went off without a major hitch.
By the end of the two-day forum for the “Belt and Road Initiative”, nearly 30 nations in Asia, Europe, Africa and Latin America were all board Chinese President Xi Jinping’s plan to breathe new life into ancient trade routes linking China to Asia, the Middle East, Africa and beyond.
Along the road, Xi had cast China as a defender of free trade in contrast to a more inward-looking United States and a fractured Europe.
But China also failed to dispel unease about its strategic intentions among most industrialised nations and some major emerging economies, leaving Beijing with a long way to go to realise Xi’s ambitions to fill the world leadership gap on globalisation, analysts said.
As China’s signature foreign policy event of the year, the summit appeared largely to be a diplomatic success thanks to meticulous preparation and more importantly, China’s benevolence and generosity, according to Yun Sun, from the Stimson Centre in Washington.
On top of US$60 billion in Chinese investment pledged since the initiative was proposed in 2013, Xi committed another US$113 billion to help fund infrastructure projects around the world.
Observers agreed Xi emerged a domestic and international winner by promoting China as a defender of globalisation when world leadership on the issue is in short supply.
Sun said the summit served Xi’s domestic political agenda, burnishing his credibility and achievements in the lead-up to the Communist Party’s national congress.
“Given the sensitivity associated with the 19th party congress later this year, Xi left no stone unturned to make sure the summit proceeded smoothly. It will serve to prove Xi’s great leadership not only in China but also in the world,” he said.
The Chinese president’s mantra at the meeting was “openness and inclusiveness”. Amid suspicion and concerns among most developed nations and major emerging economies, Xi said the new Silk Road push would not exclude any party or target anyone.
Alexander Gabuev, of the Carnegie Moscow Centre, said Xi was trying to contrast his plan with the “closed-door club” of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the US’ now-abandoned attempt to create a multilateral free-trade pact in the Asia-Pacific.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi talks with his Japanese counterpart Shinzo Abe in this file photo from 2015. India has so far refused to join the belt plan. Photo: AP
“The initiative has become a brand of China’s soft power that doesn’t carry any practical meaning, but provides a public relations wrap for many of China’s private and state-led activities around the world,” Gabuev said.
He said the initiative was “another way to talk about” China’s rise and the resulting global redistribution of power.
On paper, China and the other 63 nations along the belt and road do present an impressive bloc, accounting for about 60 per cent of the world’s population and 30 per cent of its total economic output.
Beijing went some way to making the concept an economic reality by signing a raft of trade and infrastructure deals with countries taking part in the meeting.
But there appeared to be setbacks to Xi’s attempts to set the global rules of the game, with major EU countries refusing to sign up to proposed summit documents on trade, and countries, such as India, deciding not to send a high-level official delegation to Beijing.
Steve Tsang, director of the SOAS China Institute in London, said India’s refusal to take part marked a key flaw in the initiative.
“If a major neighbour like India, which is geographically within the belt and road initiative, clearly refuses to join, it shows the real extent of China’s appeal,” Tsang said, adding that such setbacks would be brushed aside by state media.
“Whatever the actual benefits the initiative will bring to China, it will be promoted as a great achievement in China, and few will voice a different assessment domestically unless they are prepared to be seen as enemies or, at least, critics of Xi.”
Xi tried to reassure some of China’s sceptical neighbours about the initiative, insisting it would not become a geoeconomic dimension of growing Chinese assertiveness in the region.
Jay Batongbacal, a maritime law expert at the University of the Philippines, said Beijing’s pledges would be received well among Southeast Asian nations but their suspicions about Chinese intentions would persist and hamper participation.
“After all, many Southeast Asian countries already have their own particular experiences with Chinese diplomacy and economic policy in the past and this will inform their assessments of China’s promises under the Belt and Road Initiative,” he said.
“Unless China provides assurances that lessons have been learned to avoid any negative impacts, the Belt and Road Initiative may not reach its full potential.”
Apart from concerns that it will erode the influence of regional powers, critics have also raised questions about the initiative’s vague scope, the commercial viability of its expensive infrastructure projects, and the real benefits and political risks for participating countries, many of which are in volatile areas and have limited access to capital from non-Chinese financial institutions and companies.
Xu Weizhong, director of the Institute of African Studies at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, admitted the fate of Xi’s global ambition would largely rest on how well Beijing was able to win the hearts and minds of the historically, culturally and politically disparate countries along the routes.
“Frankly, working along with other nations at the government level is the easy part and we still have a long way to go to reach out to the grass-roots of society and seek their understanding and support,” Xu said.
Analysts also said there were logical inconsistencies in Xi’s high-minded pledges to not“export our own social system and model of development, or impose our own will on others”.
“China claims that the initiative would be all about connectivity, co-development beyond the traditional geostrategic competition. That is against the nature of international politics today. I think the biggest issue for China is that China has not yet convinced the world that this geoeconomic campaign does not have a geostrategic implication,” Sun said.
“Given that China’s foreign policy has been soaked in geopolitical a instinct, it is very hard for China to convince the world that now it has become so glorious, lofty and altruistic.
“China has a long way to go to prove that the initiative will turn out to be exactly what they claimed.”http://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy-defence/article/2094719/vision-or-mirage-cashed-and-keen-china-faces-long-haul