Belt and Road initiative meets Africa: Exploring the state of play, the implications and the imperative for complementarities of interests

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-31
Author(s):  
Collins C Ajibo
Keyword(s):  
Dispute Settlement ◽  
Cultural Diplomacy ◽  
Infrastructure Investment ◽  
Belt And Road Initiative ◽  
Global Order ◽  
African Countries ◽  
Investment Bank ◽  
Chinese Enterprises ◽  
Belt And Road ◽  
Trade And Investment

China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is expected to link the world to a gigantic trade and investment corridor, with China at the centre of the new multilateralism. Since its announcement in 2013, China has taken significant steps to actualise its vision through massive investment in infrastructure in the belt-road regions supported by Chinese financial institutions, including the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). Critics argue that BRI is a covert means for China to exert greater influence on the global trade and investment landscape but China has countered this. Nevertheless, emerging evidence indicates that, beyond the promotion of trade and investment, China is using BRI to export overcapacity, internationalise renminbi, promote cultural diplomacy, secure resources and redefine the global order. Hence, African countries stand in danger of neocolonialism unless they optimise the partnership with China to foster a win-win situation. In particular, African countries must recognise the significance of deft management of unsustainable Chinese loans that may entrap them in future, embedding more transparency in contract bidding for infrastructure investment, insisting on capacity building and skill spillovers and ensuring that transnational dispute settlement with Chinese enterprises is adjudicated in a neutral venue, if African courts lack the jurisdiction to entertain the matter.

China and the Struggle over the Future of International Order

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhongying Pang
Keyword(s):  
International Institutions ◽  
International Order ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Infrastructure Investment ◽  
Belt And Road Initiative ◽  
Investment Bank ◽  
The Future ◽  
Belt And Road ◽  
Governance Institutions ◽  
The Belt And Road

This chapter discusses China’s changing attitude, doctrine, and policy actions towards international order and offers some tentative findings on the complexity of China’s role in the struggle over the future of international order. This complexity results from China’s efforts simultaneously to consolidate its presence in the existing international order but also to reform existing global governance institutions. The ambition to seek an alternative international order makes it, at least to some extent, a revisionist state. While pursuing an agenda to reform the existing international order from within, China additionally has begun to sponsor an unprecedented number of new international institutions and initiatives of its own, such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). How this will play out will depend above all on the interaction of China with a USA still wedded to its hegemonic role in world politics.

CHINA’S BELT AND ROAD INITIATIVE: A VIEW FROM A MAHATHIRIST IMAGINARY

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
KHOO BOO TEIK
Keyword(s):  
Diplomatic Relations ◽  
Belt And Road Initiative ◽  
Global Order ◽  
Trade Routes ◽  
Debt Burden ◽  
China Trade ◽  
Belt And Road ◽  
The Chinese Dream ◽  
Trade And Investment

Malaysia’s Mahathir Mohamad stands in a delicate position vis-à-vis China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The BRI’s Silk Road-like scenarios of transcontinental rail links to extend market-facilitated trade and investment have a place within a ‘Mahathirist imaginary’ that opposes inequities in a western-ruled global order and sees hope for the ‘rise of Asia’. In vision he shares the ‘Chinese Dream’ of resurrecting ancient land and maritime trade routes as an ‘imperative of globalization’ despite attempts by others to entangle the BRI in narratives of geopolitics long repugnant to his deep non-aligned convictions. His unprecedented resumption of premiership in May 2018 gave Mahathir a dream-like chance to engage with the BRI but he has been jolted by some Malaysian-China projects contracted in the name of the BRI by the Najib Razak-headed regime (2009–2018). Concerned that those projects could strain Malaysia’s debt burden and undermine its sovereignty Mahathir must balance his support for BRI with undoing some of its local manifestations without jeopardizing long-term Malaysia-China trade, investment and diplomatic relations.

scholarly journals China’s Belt and Road Initiative Revisited: Challenges and Ways Forward

2018 ◽  
Vol 04 (01) ◽  
pp. 39-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yitzhak Shichor
Keyword(s):  
Economic Benefits ◽  
Belt And Road Initiative ◽  
Shanghai Cooperation Organization ◽  
African Countries ◽  
The West ◽  
Investment Bank ◽  
Multilateral Institutions ◽  
Belt And Road ◽  
First Time ◽  
The Belt And Road

Compared with other Chinese-proposed multilateral institutions such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is not yet fully institutionalized. Still, it has been enthusiastically welcomed by many Asian and African countries, though less so by Western ones, Japan, and Russia. This is not only because of the expected economic benefits being Asian- and African-centric, but perhaps more importantly, because of the BRI having potential to be an exceptional Eastern model that may become universal. Up to the recent times, the flow of religions, doctrines, ideas and ideologies has mainly been from the West to the East, often accompanied by Western colonialism. Now, if the BRI is successfully implemented, for the first time in history a model of Eastern origin may affect the West and the rest of world. Unlike national liberation movements which had achieved political but not economic independence, China’s BRI could facilitate an international liberation movement that helps Asian and African countries to achieve growth and development, and thereby become economically independent as well. The innovation of the BRI does not only lie in its direction of influence (from the East to the West), but also in that it will be accomplished in Chinese rather than Western ways. That, more than particular economic benefits, explains the BRI’s attraction.

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