—A Review on Sixth Anniversary of BRI

Xue Li(CASS) LIU He(CFAU)

It has been six years since the Belt and Road Initiative(BRI), regarded as a Century Project, was proposed in 2013. BRI is now exerting an increasingly significant effect on the whole world when influencing China itself greatly. Overall, positive opinions of the many from both home and abroad coexist with some doubts of the few. The researches done over the past more than five years offer the author the following judgments.

 

the Top-Level Design for China’s Diplomacy At first, BRI was mainly aimed at promoting cooperation with developing countries and then it gradually integrated cooperation with developed countries into its framework. It is implemented by means of memorandums of understanding, the third-party market cooperation, small multilateral mechanisms, resolutions of international organizations and the like. Building BRI jointly is both a means of deepening economic cooperation and an important way to improve the global development mode and reform global governance system. Internally, BRI will support to realize the Chinese Dream and externally, it serves to build a Community with a Shared Future for Mankind. It demonstrates China’s foreign policy concept such as Non-alignment Policy and Partnership Diplomacy. Meanwhile, it embodies China’s independent foreign policy of peace it pursued consistently. BRI has been divided into different levels. First of all, it is the top-level designing for China’s diplomacy under Xi Administration; secondly, it is the guideline of China’s diplomacy in Xi’s period;thirdly, It is the way for China to carry out global governance; fourly, it serves as the main platform for China to make public goods for the world,etc.

 

Achievements beyond Expectation China has signed 195 documents with 136 countries and 30 international organization under the framework of BRI. A large number of international organizations, including UN, has passed resolutions to extend their endorsement of BRI. What’s more, some countries consider it as a great opportunity to promote self-development. After gradually changing their attitudes to BRI, some developed countries finally participated in the construction of it by way of the third-party market cooperation. While criticizing BRI, some developed countries also began to borrow ideas from BRI.

 

For China, BRI, can achieve several goals in a way the host countries can accept, which is to strengthen their bilateral relations, to stretch China’s national interests and to assume more responsibilities as a major power.

 

The achievements BRI made is far beyond people’s expectations. Meanwhile, BRI itself also needs to grow with a constant adjustment and enrichment, and this is in accordance with China’s style of world governance. The accomplishments achieved by reform and opening-up prove that the strategy-groping forward after deciding the general direction-works well.

 

Emerging Challenges These challenges consist of three aspects as below. As a developing country and late comer of the nation state system, China still confronts a series of challenges, namely, to further develop itself, to assume more responsibilities as a major power, to keep the sustainability of BRI construction. In host countries, these challenges include their concerns over China increasing influence, their political unrest, the common’s misunderstandings of some projects and the so-called debt trap fabricated by Western media, etc.

 

Some developed countries and developing powers are worried that their interests and sphere of influence would be affected by China’s rise and thus throw doubts on the intentions of BRI. What’s worse, the sole superpower, the US, sees China as its strategic competitor and even balances and oppresses China with the Indo-Pacific Rebalance Strategy and trade war.

 

Sustainability of BRI construction As a Century Project mentioned by the top leader, the sucess of BRI relies on its long-term effects rather than its short term outcomes. Consequently, these challenges must be tackled well to achieve the sustainability of BRI. To ensure that goal, China needs to take the following measures at least.

 

Firstly, strengthen the management of BRI. More priority should be assigned to the quality of projects rather than its quantity when choosing projects. When cooperating with some countries on some certain projects, China had better slow down and even suspend them. Some projects of high risks can be carried out after conditions allow.

 

Secondly, reduce the doubts of host countries and gain further understanding and support. Thus the cooperation pattern needs to be formed where the host countries take a major role and China, holding its veto power, plays a complementary role. China should show more respect for the host countries in terms of way and speed of construction.

 

Thirdly, China should regard those developed countries who are willing to cooperate as important partners when promoting BRI. China also needs to strengthen the mechanism of bilateral cooperation and determine the region the host countries and the projects for the third-party market cooperation, for instance, China and South Korea may choose country A while China and Japan have coutry B.

 

Some developed countries and developing powers express no willingness to support BRI openly. In this regard, China needs to be patient. Expanding the circle of friends in various manners is part of building BRI against the background that the competition between China and the US is increasingly fierce and will be prolonged. China’s concept of pursuing cooperation and mutual benefits with openness will gain acknowledgement from more and more countries.

 

China needs to realize it clearly that qualitatively, the essence of Sino-US relations remains the same and the United States is China’s competitor rather than its enemy. Therefore, “decoupling” and “comprehensive confrontation” are not within options. However, wrestling with it is a better alternative. That is to say, China should strengthen its relationship with Americans who still likes to cooperate with China. By doing so, China may continue to use the comparative advantages in science and technology, capital, market, education and other aspects.

 

Briefly, with its impressive achievements, BRI is likely to become one of the foreign policy decisions that influence the world most since 1949. In the meantime, the challenges facing it are increasingly protruding. it is normal for a project lasting for about one hundred year.To build BRI in a sustainable way, China needs to maintain concentration and keep patient when tackling challenges.

 

Author:

 

XUE Li, Director and Senior Fellow of Department of International Strategy, at Institute of World Economics and Politics(IWEP), Chinese Academy of Social Sciences(CASS), He is also a professor of University of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (UCASS).

 

His research interests cover China’s foreign strategy, China’s foreign policy, ocean issue, and energy politics. In recent years, he mainly focuses on the Belt and Road Initiative and the South China Sea dispute. He has published 3 monographs, edited 3 books, and more than 300 academic papers, research reports and editorials have been published.

 

LIU He, postgraduate of China Foreign Affairs University

 

首次在The Korea Times 上发文章，感谢选修《中国WJ》课程的苗蓓蕾、凌枫与周蓓同学对本文的批评意见，让我意识到英文译文中存在的一些问题，特别是英文表述中存在的不够清晰之处。责任在我。这里发布的是原稿，供有兴趣者参考比对。发表版的链接为：Unexpected achievements, emerging challenges on sixth anniversary of BRI - Korea Times 

https://m.koreatimes.co.kr/pages/article.asp?newsIdx=278384