一带一路, The BRI: Fuelling Fears or Bridging Dreams?

Belt and Road International Forum in 2017. Right to left: President of China Xi Jinping, President of Russia Vladimir Putin, President of Indonesia Joko Widodo. (Photo: The Russian Presidential Press and Information Office, licensed under CC-BY-4.0, via Wikimedia Commons) 

In recent weeks, Italy has announced its withdrawal from the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) by refusing to renew the 2019 memorandum of understanding that framed the partnership. This marked not only the end of four years of cooperation between China and Italy, but also highlights rising scepticism and criticism about the initiative itself and the way it impacts participating members.  

Indeed, when declaring the intent to leave the initiative back in July 2023, the Italian defence minister Guido Crosetto stated that “the decision to join the [new] Silk Road was an improvised and atrocious act” to the benefit of China, increasing its exports in Italian markets but failing to benefit Italy as equally in Chinese markets.  

The minister added that he was concerned about Beijing’s assertiveness when it comes to “its ambition to have the largest military presence in the world and its ambitions to expand, particularly in Africa”, as reported by The Guardian.  

This concern is shared amongst Western politicians and is widespread in media commentary, in which China’s BRI is portrayed as an invasive and aggressive project that intends to “debt-trap” developing countries. The prevalent Western opinion of the BRI is therefore one of doubt and fear against China and its growing power on the international stage.  

But it is not the first time that such a development strategy has existed: the Marshall Plan initiated by the United States after the Second World War closely resembles the premise behind the BRI. 

The Marshall Plan is often celebrated for rebuilding and developing Europe in the aftermath of the war. But it intervened, or we could even say interfered in far more ways than often described. Trade within Western Europe had to be liberalised to US standards; trade with Eastern Europe was curtailed due to Soviet influence during the Cold War; and American investments were encouraged.  

In May 1947, the French Prime Minister Paul Ramadier and the Italian Prime Minister Alcide de Gasperi were told by the United States government and Truman administration that if they did not oust communist representatives from their respective Parliaments, they would not be receiving economic aid from the US. Economic aid posed as an opportunity to force nations to conform to the United States's ideology. 

Similarly, in the 1970s, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank imposed liberalisation in Africa with its Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs). These restructuring measures resulted in increased poverty, lack of economic growth, sometimes including decreases in national Gross Domestic Product, as well as decline in social indicators such as life expectancy. Many call the period following the consequences of the SAPs the “Lost Decades”. 

The history of foreign aid and development strategies is closely linked to instances of neocolonialism and economic imperialism. But is the BRI a continuation of this legacy or does it mark a departure from it? Are Western commentators right in fearing the project? 

Studies have shown that despite the prevalent fear of “debt-trap diplomacy” in the West, the BRI has worked on improving its debt risk policy in order to prevent such instances of economic imperialism.  

The BRI distinguishes also itself from past development projects in that it offers funding with fewer strings attached, restricted to debt risk and repayment policy rather than influencing a nation’s general economic, political and societal institutions. This allows nations to develop without subscribing to the Western model led by the United States. Instead of imposing a specific model and ideology as feared by the West, China instead respects the cultural and political sovereignty of the BRI’s member states, only intervening economically within the framework of the initiative.  

Whilst it cannot be denied that the BRI is a vehicle for Chinese soft power, after considering the above information, scholars have therefore discredited the portrayal of the BRI as an aggressive power-grab for world domination. 

In reality, Western fears of the BRI stem not from the actuality of the project but rather Western conceptions of it.  

The BRI has been viewed by Western commentators from a Realist perspective that assumes harsh competition between rising and weakening powers. This is illustrated with President Barack Obama’s foreign policy decision to “Pivot to Asia”. The strategy is a reference to Mackinder’s Heartland Theory, which refers to Central Asia, a key region of the BRI, as a “pivot area” whose control can bring about world domination. Seen this way, China's ambitions in Central Asia and the BRI can be described as slightly threatening to say the least. 

However, these theoretical frameworks are Western in nature, and portrayals of the BRI fall prey to Eurocentrism. There has been a movement to study the BRI from new perspectives which has given rise to new understandings of the project and goals.  

In particular, the 天下 (tiān xià) concept, which means All-Under-Heaven, has become popular in explaining China’s motivations behind the BRI. In this framework, the “world” is put before the “nation-state”: a world order is therefore not a case in which there is one hegemon imposing its will on others, but rather an instance of cooperation and harmony where nations are linked by the transcending goal of humanity. The 天下 recognizes that humanity is diverse, and therefore no state can be excluded on the basis of ideology, politics or culture, as embodied by the BRI. This agency has made both China and the BRI popular in participating members’ public perception. 

Just as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so does fear lie in the perception of observers. Western portrayals of the BRI see the project as a means to global domination due to Westphalian legacies in which the highest unit of analysis stops at the nation-state. Transcending the unit of the nation-state to create greater regional cooperation is seen as infringing on national sovereignty and therefore an instance of power politics. Alternative conceptions such as the 天下 offer a more representative perception of the BRI from does who benefit from it.