More than seven years have gone by since China started its One Belt One Road Initiative (BRI). In 2013 Chinese leader Xi Jinping first introduced this transnational economic belt initiative, then known as the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road.
The BRI starts in mainland China, moves along the Silk Road, via Central Asia, to Russia and Europe. On the surface, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is developing new economic cooperation with countries and regions by strengthening infrastructure along the route. The real driving force is CCP’s desire to digest its industrial overcapacity and labor in China, and drive the development of the western region to ensure the energy supply for the mainland. There are also geopolitical and security reasons for the CCP’s One Belt area.
With the unfolding of the BRI, the CCP and Pakistan first carried out a series of large-scale projects, very much the hub and flagship of the Belt and Road Initiative. The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor is 1,850 miles long and has an investment of $46 billion. During Xi Jinping’s visit to Pakistan, China and Pakistan signed cooperation agreements and memorandums on 51 projects. The CCP has also invested $50 billion to build five reservoirs and hydropower stations in the Indus River Basin in Pakistan. This hydropower is claimed to contribute two-thirds of Pakistan’s electricity. China and Pakistan have also actively promoted the construction of the Gwadar-Xinjiang highway corridor, giving the CCP direct access to the Indian Ocean. Later, in January 2018, the Central Bank of Pakistan announced that bilateral trade between China and Pakistan could be settled in RMB, abandoning USD settlement, and opening up the use of RMB to replace USD in financing projects, which also greatly reduced the CCP’s foreign exchange pressure.
In order to increase its influence in the energy sector in Eastern Europe, the CCP has taken the lead in the construction of infrastructure such as ports, roads, railways, and power stations in southeast Europe, and also lends to relevant projects through Chinese banks. China takes the port of Piraeus in Greece as the Balkan Silk Road center and undertakes the combined transportation of goods by sea and land along the route of the BRI. China also intends to invest heavily in energy projects in Eastern European countries such as the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria, and Romania.
Facing Europe, the CCP launched the trans-Eurasia express to strengthen business and trade ties with European countries. The train travels through 28 Chinese cities including Xi’an, Chongqing, Zhengzhou, and Chengdu to 29 cities in 11 European countries including Milan, Moscow, Minsk, and Hamburg. The CCP emphasizes that the express train can save three-fourths over the time at sea and the cost is about one-fifth of that of aviation. However, it deliberately conceals the apparent cost saving of sea transportation and the efficiency of air transportation.
The CCP’s ambition and its barbaric and domineering mentality were fully demonstrated as the BRI reached the Indian Ocean countries. The CCP led the plan to build a seaport in Hambantota, Sri Lanka. The first phase of the port project started in November 2010. The construction cost was $361 million. The Export-Import Bank of China invested 85 percent of the cost and the port was on lease for 99 years. But later, due to the Sri Lankan government’s inability to repay its debts, Sri Lanka officially handed over Hambantota Port to China under this 99-year lease.
The BRI met resistance from its counter states in Southeast Asia. Prior to the BRI, the CCP tried to strengthen economic and trade ties in the region through the RCEP deal (Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement). After the implementation of the BRI, the CCP sought to build a Trans-Asian Railway to connect China and Southeast Asian countries. However, the doubts and dissatisfaction of Southeast Asian countries toward the CCP are reflected in projects such as the China-Thailand Railway, the Letpadaung Copper Mine in Burma, and the Hambantota Port in Sri Lanka. Leaders of these countries have doubts about the CCP, leading to the continuous overturning and renegotiating of contracts.
The BRI mission has extended from the expansion of the Chinese foreign trade market, exporting excess capacity, exporting the CCP’s infrastructure model, exporting unemployment, and obtaining stable energy supplies, to gradually occupying strategic locations, building geopolitical alliances, uniting Europe against the United States, exporting the communist ideology, and finally promoting communist autocratic rule to the world. It is a comprehensive project with multiple goals in politics, economy, and military. The BRI has signed contracts with 46 countries in Africa, involved 38 countries in Asia, 27 countries in Europe, 12 countries in Oceania, and 19 countries in Central and South America.
The CCP intends to build a new international trade and economic system with its world factory. The CCP denies that the BRI is the Chinese version of the Marshall Plan because it does not have the original intention of the Marshall Plan to support Europe and fight communism. The CCP succeeded in persuading the UK to join the plan because it catered to the concerns of the UK economy caused by the UK’s withdrawal from the EU’s single market and the uncertainty of UK foreign trade.
What is the correct way to tackle the CCP’s BRI? Are the international community’s counteractions effective?
At the end of March this year, after the United States, the UK, the EU, and Canada imposed sanctions on CCP officials for human rights violations in Xinjiang, the CCP imposed “counter-sanctions’' on the European Union, the UK, Canada, and the United States. As the tension between the West and the CCP escalated, the leaders of the United States and the UK expressed that they would unite with democratic countries to launch an initiative to counter the BRI. The details of the plan have not yet been released, but British Prime Minister Boris Johnson agreed on a conference call with Biden to provide hundreds of millions of pounds in support of the initiative. The UK may consider expelling Chinese spies as part of its plan.
Specifically, the U.S.-Japan countermeasures are only directed at the technical level of 5G and the construction of new energy sources, but this is not enough to stop the CCP’s Huawei from conquering this field. The United States and Japan have the ability and technology to use satellite technologies such as the Starlink project to directly occupy the new 5G and even 6G standards and facilities, leaving the CCP far behind. India’s “Monsoon Project” and “Spice Route Project” lack sufficient teeth and strength, and can at best slow the CCP’s impact in Pakistan, but cannot pose a real threat to the CCP. India needs to join the Indo-Pacific alliance advocated by the United States more actively, launch a full-scale offensive on the CCP, give up its dependence on Russian weapons, fully integrate into the West, and become the market and promoter of the new international trading system. The British plan takes national security into consideration and is commendable. In addition to continuing to pressure the CCP on Xinjiang and Hong Kong, the Western countries should also actively promote Taiwan’s status and power, and make it a free China, the nemesis of the autocratic CCP.
The United States and its allies also need to pursue the CCP in greater depth on the pandemic and the origin of the virus, and even push for compensation to bankrupt the CCP regime. The bankruptcy of the CCP will prevent it from using investment and capital as bait to attract countries, which will carry a heavy burden by joining the BRI. It requires the United States to continue its policy of cutting off the CCP’s economic corruption during the Trump era, continuing tough measures to defeat the CCP in all fields such as tariffs, trade, technology, and human rights.
