China’s Belt and Road Initiative with ASEAN Countries: Examining the Trade Cooperation and Impact of Coronavirus

The rising US–China tension in the global trade war increased the trade cooperation between China and the ASEAN. Consequently, China’s total import and export volume with ASEAN increased tremendously to 684.60 billion USD in 2020, up by 6.7% year on year. This trend is part of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) which promotes China’s infrastructure building program in the neighboring ASEAN countries and exports China’s technical know-how and engineering standards. However, the recent coronavirus outbreak that stormed China and the rest of the world caused delays to many BRI projects. Subsequently, this outbreak also hit the ASEAN countries and halted many of their mega-projects under the BRI framework. Thus, this study attempts to highlight the trade cooperation and project developments of BRI in the ASEAN countries. In addition, the study features the landscape of BRI projects that were affected by the coronavirus amongst the ASEAN countries.

An International Comparison of the COVID-19 Experiences of the Group-of-Seven and the BRICS Countries

The COVID-19 pandemic has been around since December 2019. In this study, the experiences of the Group-of-Seven Countries (G-7 — Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and the US) and the BRICS Countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) are compared in terms of the numbers of confirmed cases and deaths and the infection and mortality rates. The objective is to see whether such a comparison may yield some insight on how and when the COVID-19 pandemic in the world will finally be under control. The key turns out to be the minimization of secondary and higher-order transmissions of the virus. This requires, first, the practice of good personal hygiene and social distancing on the part of all the residents; second, mandatory rapid testing and exhaustive contact tracing, by the public health authorities; and third, lockdown, quarantine and travel restrictions by the government. The governments of the individual countries must fight the COVID-19 epidemic as if it were a war if they expect to succeed in bringing the epidemic under control in their respective countries.

Belt and Road Initiative alias Chinese Dream: How Are the Cards Dealt for This Game?

An old Chinese proverb says, “if you want to be rich, build a path”. The People’s Republic of China (from now on, China) has already verified this proverb’s validity in the old Silk Road. The oldest and most famous trade route in history has managed to help China and the surrounding region reach an imaginary peak in its time. Today, after centuries of unrest, wars, economic decline, and international isolation, China is once again building a path to help it return to the world’s most developed nations, the New Silk Road, respectively the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The BRI has been defined as “the most eye-catching and possibly the one with the longest-term significance” (Ferdinand, 2017) [“Westward Ho — The China Dream and ‘One Belt, One Road’: Chinese Foreign Policy under Xi Jinping,” in Weiqing Song, ed., China’s Relations with Central and Eastern Europe: From “Old Comrades” to New Partners (London: Routledge, 2017), pp. 1–18]. The Silk Road project was introduced in 2013 by the Chinese President Xi Jinping in response to the economic crisis and the subsequent effort to find new markets and trading partners. The BRI restores the idea of the ancient Silk Road. The BRI is thus the result of a changed approach to foreign policy and the idea of opening up China. However, this policy cannot be perceived only as economic cooperation, but a well-thought-out Chinese foreign policy to expand its influence not only in Asia. The Sinocentric view of the world is thus one of the fundamental aspects of Chinese foreign policy formation. What will the country have to deal with in the future and, above all, what can we expect from China? This paper aims to provide insights into the visions proposed by the BRI, i.e. to capture the main milestones in the current development of the BRI, detailed analysis of its nature, and its current situation and implementation.

Getting Undergraduates Ready for China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) Through an Overseas Experiential Learning Project

In this paper, we explain how an experiential learning course and study tour to Gansu Province (People’s Republic of China) enabled undergraduates at the Singapore Management University (SMU) to acquire 21st-century competencies and higher-order thinking skills by analyzing and evaluating specific aspects of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and China–Singapore (Chongqing) Connectivity Initiative — New International Land–Sea Trade Corridor (CCI-ILSTC) with emphasis on developing viable Go-To-Market (GTM) strategies aimed at selling Gansu produce in four Southeast Asian markets. We share how the course was designed to support the attainment of key learning goals and discuss how we turned pedagogical aspirations into concrete learning outcomes. We introduce key aspects of the so-called “SMU-XO” project that the students conducted in partnership with an industry partner, Pacific International Lines (PIL), and discuss how the project work helped learners to gain global competency by (i) examining critical issues related to BRI such as multi-modal infrastructure connectivity, (ii) appreciating the local perspectives of project stakeholders in Lanzhou and Shanghai and (iii) successfully interacting with people from different cultures, namely China, Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia and Thailand.

The Quad in Relation to China and ASEAN: Geopolitical Irritant, Stabilizing Shock Absorber, or Springboard to the Future?

This paper traces the evolution of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) from its inception in an ad-hoc manner in 2004 to its current, more formal iteration, beginning in 2017. It asks whether the regional cross-currents, ranging from trade tensions to competing territorial claims in the South China Sea, will give the Quad scope to play a constructive stabilizing role or whether the grouping will simply exacerbate frictions. The interests of the Quad members, together with those of ASEAN and China, are highlighted in assessing the extent to which they can be reconciled or leveraged for the benefit of regional stability, security and development. The paper postulates a continuum running from the Quad as irritant to shock absorber or, ideally, springboard to the future and further explains how a broader mission for the Quad, focusing on (i) operational interests and flexible cooperation among like-minded states rather than (ii) “security” and formal membership per se, may be most consistent with the modern approach to balancing sovereignty and collective action and to advancing in real terms the needs and interests of the region.