By MICHAEL DUNFORD. Originally via China Daily on July 6, 2023
Belt and Road Initiative promotes emergence of more equitable and peaceful international order
As is known, Chinese President Xi Jinping proposed to build the Silk Road Economic Belt in Kazakhstan in September 2013 and the Maritime Silk Road of the 21st Century in Indonesia the following month. In March 2015, the vision and movements for the joint structure of the Silk Road, the Economic Belt and the Maritime Silk Road of the 21st Century were launched through the Chinese government. In May 2017 and April 2019, the first and momentary Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation was held, with a third scheduled for 2023.
Essentially, the Belt and Road Initiative, as they are now jointly called, contains a set of bilateral and multilateral agreements between China and other countries aimed at expanding connectivity, trade, investment, people-to-people relations, currency integration, policy coordination and trade development. Since the Ministry of Commerce began reporting knowledge about China’s non-cash direct investment in Belt and Road countries, it has increased almost steadily despite the economic turmoil of recent years, from $14. 83 billion in 2015 to $20. 97 billion in 2022. In 2022, despite the continuation of the COVID-19 pandemic, it stood at $129. 6 billion.
The Belt and Road Initiative is a tiered infrastructure framework focused on energy and electricity, railways, roads, shipping, aviation, pipelines, cross-border fiber optic cables and embedded spatial data networks designed for shipping and transaction prices and percentage data, as well as areas of economic progression. energy, water and social infrastructure. Initially covering Asia, Europe and Africa, it has expanded to the Pacific and Latin America and aims for cooperation and non-violent economic progress.
The China-Europe express railway is a striking example. Between 2011 and 2022, trains made more than 65,000 trips and transported $300 billion worth of goods. A network of 82 service lines crosses Eurasia connecting more than two hundred cities. Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, Manzhouli in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, Suifenhe in Heilongjiang and Port Erenhot in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. .
The Belt and Road Initiative is a task that all countries can join. As China continually insists that the Belt and Road tasks are win-win, meaning they mean win-win for China, yet those gains coexist with win-win for China’s partners. Negotiated and controlled economy Integration (focusing on equality, mutual respect and autonomy) can generate win-win outcomes where the results of higher productivity resulting from economies of scale and larger market size, reduced uncertainty and risk, technological spillovers, discounts on general social prices and greater power of price chains are shared. Within the country, these gains can be widely distributed according to appropriate national and local policies.
From the beginning, the Belt and Road Initiative focused on the five principles of non-violent coexistence: mutual respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the country and the diversity of civilizations, mutual non-aggression, mutual non-interference in a country’s internal affairs, equality and gaining mutual advantage (win-win cooperation, equity and justice), and nonviolent coexistence. At his launch, Xi said the historic Silk Roads have shown that “countries of other races, creeds and cultures are fully capable of sharing peace. “and development. ” More recently, the Belt and Road Initiative has taken on a role in China’s purpose to help build a global network with a shared long-term for humanity.
In fact, the Belt and Road Initiative is one of many amazing Chinese projects aimed at solving global problems. In 2017, President Xi said the initiative was a Chinese contribution to answering two questions: What about the global and what do we deserve to do?What is the lifestyle of 3 deficits: a peace deficit, a progression deficit, and a global governance deficit. The latter includes the desire to save the Charter of the United Nations, the first two articles of which require the maintenance of external peace and security and the sovereign equality of all members. The governance deficit also implies the need for collective action to address conflict, security, progression differentials, refugee movements, climate change, environmental and biodiversity crises and skills issues. More recently, China has highlighted a security deficit and the importance of the indivisible security precept.
The Belt and Road Initiative and upcoming projects reflect unique values and precepts from various sources. Together with the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, China’s distinctive civilizational values and hybrid Chinese characteristics resulting from its overseas involvement have led to a distinct Asian vision of a foreign order. that Western civilization strives to understand. In the afterlife (until 1894), the global formula of East Asia (apart from Western interventions) is much more peaceful than Western civilization. The Chinese idea is based on a classic difference between a king who regulates through benevolence and righteousness and a hegemon who regulates through power. Chinese civilization rejects the precept of hegemony.
China’s vision is a harmonious external order rooted in China’s concepts of “everything under heaven,” relationality, and symbiosis. In this light, the Belt and Road Initiative can be described as a worldview in which one country’s good fortune can be guaranteed through the good fortune of all. The Belt and Road Initiative has good luck if all its member states expand and prosper together.
This vision of a more equitable and harmonious multipolar world is reflected not only in the Belt and Road Initiative, but also in other Chinese initiatives: the Global Development Initiative, which aims to help “other emerging countries fulfill the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. “”, “global humanitarian challenges” and “endogenous growth”; and the Global Security Initiative and the Global Civilization Initiative; as well as the concept of building a network with a long journey shared by humanity.
In short, when looking at the progress of concrete Belt and Road Initiative projects and the new monetary and governance architecture related to them, it is worth considering how the initiative seeks to contribute to the advancement of a more equitable society and democratic global order that does not want a global Leviathan.
He is Professor Emeritus at the University of Sussex and Visiting Professor at the Institute of Geographical Sciences and Natural Resources Research of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He contributed this article to China Watch, a think tank powered by China Daily.
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