China pledged an eight-point infrastructure scheme as part of its next five-year Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) goal in a recent international forum in Beijing.
In the third BRI forum opening address on Oct. 18, Chinese leader Xi Jinping promised a $47.8 billion financing pledge from Chinese development banks, “small yet smart” projects that entail 100 joint laboratories, and 100,000 training opportunities for partner countries by 2030.
Without specifically naming the United States, Mr. Xi said China “opposed geopolitical rivalry, bloc politics, unilateral sanctions, economic coercion and decoupling, and supply chain disruption” in his address.
A Decade of Debt Trap
This year marks the 10th anniversary of BRI since it was launched in 2013, with a claim to improve connectivity and cooperation on a transcontinental scale.After a decade of international cooperation, the BRI has faced significant controversy, primarily related to Beijing’s engagement in exporting corruption, debt-trap diplomacy, and exploitation of labor.
Cheng Chin-mo, chair of the Global Politics & Economics Department at Tamkang University of Taiwan, commented that the BRI summit is more of an image and propaganda for domestic audiences, as many BRI projects have ended without completion and resulted in heavy debts for the recipient countries. “For many developing nations, the BRI has become nothing short of a nightmare,” said Mr. Cheng.
Exporting Corruption
Mr. Cheng said that BRI has served Chinese corrupt officials as a money laundering mechanism to channel their corrupt monies abroad.In Xi’s address, China will work with its BRI partner countries to strengthen the building of multilateral cooperation platforms covering multiple fields such as energy, taxation, finance, green development, disaster reduction, think tanks, media, culture, and anti-corruption.
Feng Chongyi, associate professor in China Studies at the University of Technology Sydney, pointed out that when it comes to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the claim must be interpreted in reverse. That is, when it speaks of anti-corruption training, it is really about “spreading corruption,” said Mr. Feng.
He believed the decade of BRI has directly resulted in the sagging economy and debt crisis in China. “Those state-owned and central enterprises engaged in the BRI projects have to bribe local officials, and these projects are conducted through corrupt practices. The cost of each project is inflated to benefit the corrupt officials,” he said.
Corruption is a rampant issue in many African nations, where numerous unfinished projects associated with BRI have been reported.
In Kenya, for instance, a Chinese-built line from the coast all the way to Uganda in 2017 ended abruptly in a remote village, about 120 km (75 miles) west of the Kenyan capital of Nairobi after Beijing pulled out.
Pillar of Support for Terrorists
Su Tzu-yun, director of the Institute for National Defense Security in Taiwan, told the Chinese language of The Epoch Times that the BRI, while presenting an economic facade, actually harbors underlying geopolitical strategies that have been realized by the West.Many EU countries showed passive resistance after being deceived by China’s BRI for more than a decade, and Hungary is the only European country that attended the forum. “BRI has evolved into a ‘debt road,’ along with the economic struggle China’s faced with itself. This initiative is clearly and quickly hitting a dead end,” said Mr. Su.
On Oct. 17, Mr. Xi met leaders from Indonesia, Serbia, Chile, Kazakhstan, Hungary, Papua New Guinea, Ethiopia, and more. The focal point among the various dignitaries was Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Mr. Cheng said the irony in the fact that one of the attendees was a senior official from the Taliban.
Earlier in September, the CCP’s Hangzhou Asian Games welcomed Bashar al-Assad, Syria’s dictator who forcibly disappeared tens of thousands of Syrians and put the entire country into a state of humanitarian crisis.
The CCP arranged special planes to escort Mr. al-Assad in and out of Beijing. “It is really embarrasing that CCP has turned China a supporter of terrorists,” said Mr. Cheng.
