The Emperor’s New Road
The rise of China and coexisitence with the US will be one of the most definitive global macro forces in the 21st century.
The rise of China and coexisitence with the US will be one of the most definitive global macro forces in the 21st century.
Here’s a book to empower forward thinking in a global macro framework (western perspective).
The Emperor’s New Road: China and the Project of the Century (Yale University Press, 2020).
Review by Foreign Policy Magazine, the book casts out the idea of Chinese organization and states that the main Chinese project of this century has become a behemoth that China couldn't manage. This implies a disposition of Chinese strong-rule and reveals that China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) “has become a gravy train without a conductor. Its fevered pace has already exceeded China’s ability to accurately measure, let alone manage, these activities. Corruption and rent-seeking are thriving in the chaos. Conceptually, China’s BRI is closer to the War on Terror: poorly defined and ever-expanding."
Here are three mayor key points of this book:
1. Russia as a Gatekeeper of the BRI
A deeper Russian-Chinese partnership would be Henry Kissinger’s worst nightmare realized. Since WWII, the foreign policy of the United States has sought to prevent "the domination of the Eurasian landmass by a single power."
"Xi now holds the keys in the form of investment and respect that Putin, economically and diplomatically isolated from the West, craves.”
2. Central and East of Europe Role
In 2016, Cosco Shipping Ports, a Chinese company, dropped $1 billion into buying and upgrading the Greek port of Piraeus. The same company bought ports in Belgium, Spain, and Italy. Since 2018, one-tenth of all European port capacity is controlled by Chinese firms.
Under this menace, some European voices have supported the Chinese expansion. "China’s divisive push into the EU’s neighborhood could eventually help unite it. After all, the Soviet Union helped bring the EU into existence."
Halford Mackinder, a British geographer, argued that European civilization itself is a reaction to threats from the East. “European civilization is, in a very real sense, the outcome of the secular struggle against Asiatic invasion,” he wrote in 1904.
3. An Opaque Monster
BRI deployment offers ample opportunities for bribery, kickbacks and theft. Each project from the Western viewpoint has a lack of transparency and accountability. The consequences to China for a poorly chosen project are a decrease in returns. The "recipients struggle to pay back loans. Scandals reveal the true beneficiaries of these deals, and popular resentment grows."
For instance, China and Pakistan’s most ambitious connectivity projects, a pipeline and railway, remain pipe dreams.
The pipeline from Gwadar (Pakistan), among the Karakorum mountains, to Kashgar (China) represents the side B of BRI:
"Both projects are estimated to cost $16 billion, and each will take at least five years to build. Officially, the southern component is slated to begin construction in 2025, and the northern component will begin in 2030, close enough to allow officials to speak about the project with a straight face and far enough away to allow them to comfortably delay it.”
Furthermore, "Pakistani businesses have pressed their provincial governments to delay the creation of special economic zones, which the Chinese government is eager to set up. So far, China and Pakistan have avoided dangerous misunderstandings. Even as expectations are not met, new promises are made that allow officials on both sides to maintain optimism. Without tangible results, enthusiasm for Chinese investment and tolerance for Chinese workers could turn into resentment.”
Source: Reconnecting Asia.
About the author
Jonathan E. Hillman is a senior fellow with the CSIS Economics Program and director of the Reconnecting Asia Project, one of the most extensive open-source databases tracking China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Hillman is a former advisor to the Obama administration.