26 April 2020, NIICE Commentary 4238
Dr. Lipi Ghosh
The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is a motivated programme by China to connect Asia with Africa and Europe via land, rail and maritime networks along the six corridors, with the aim of improving regional integration and economy. The USD 1 trillion initiative includes projects in trade, transportation, energy and infrastructure such as ports, railways, oil and gas pipelines and power grids, along with plans for new economic corridors. The BRI plans cover about more than 70 countries in the world. It is, in fact, a reintroduction of Zheng He’s maritime route across China sea, Malacca strait and Indian Ocean, extending till the east coast of Africa. The BRI is considered as the modernised version of the ancient silk route.
Among BRI allies, China has age old friendly relations with South East Asia. Since 2013, new strategic initiatives have emerged in the China–ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) relationship to promote intensive cooperation and development. To build and strengthen connectivity and generate a more efficient infrastructure network have become master policy plans for China and the ASEAN. It is worth mentioning that the development of a “South–South cooperation” can also result from strong China- ASEAN ties, and here again, the BRI has an important role to play.
The crucial question today is how could the COVID-19 Pandemic alter this closeness between China and the ASEAN. In spite of the aforementioned China-South East Asia partnership, with COVID-19, changes are designated to take place. China’s interest in its ambitious BRI project will be jeopardised. It is perhaps too early to say precisely how extensively the pandemic will change the dynamics, but it is quite easy to highlight some of the weaknesses of the BRI that have come up with the Pandemic. These shortcomings will drastically impact China-ASEAN relations.
Taken from perspective of international relations, BRI in context of ASEAN needs to be understood with reference to US President Donald Trump’s Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP) strategy, which provides a counterpoint to China’s increased penetration into the ASEAN through the BRI. According to a recent New York Times report, US Warships entered ‘Disputed Waters of the South China Sea’, escalating tensions and aggravating Chinese response. The move comes as a military threat from the United States to China, over the Coronavirus issue. While the United States has no territorial claims in the South China Sea, the American navy says that it has kept the peace in these waters for decades. American military officials have chastised China for its increased militarisation of the Sea.
As the COVID-19 pandemic spreads worldwide, the public health crisis and the responses to it bring grave negative impacts for China’s leadership aspirations. China has begun to provide healthcare aid like ventilators, masks, protective gear and test kits to BRI countries (including Italy and Spain). But, there is a serious allegation that China is supplying poor quality health support, which is tarnishing its image further. If Beijing is remembered for both, its initial cover-up of the situation, and as the provider of poor quality healthcare support, it will surely change the way in which BRI ally countries previously thought China, and may even stop relying on it.
The Cambodia’s Sihanouk ville Special Economic Zone, an important project in the BRI, came to a standstill, and projects across Indonesia, Myanmar, and Malaysia became stuck in holding patterns. A freeze on the flow of Chinese labor is a significant factor in these disruptions, with thousands of Chinese workers unable to return to their country of work. Due to the spread of COVID-19, all BRI host countries were badly afflicted, and it will bring both old and new BRI projects to a halt. At the recipient country level, more than 130 countries around the world have placed entry restrictions on Chinese citizens or individuals traveling from China.
The COVID-19 crisis has also hampered China’s manufacturing supply chains and the BRI projects are predominantly dependent on Chinese goods, rather than local, materials and supplies. The pandemic has adversely affected the global supply chains that keep BRI projects moving forward, limiting the flow of goods out of China. China’s shuttered factories not only need workers to resume normal output generation, but also need restored supplies of raw materials, adequate stores of protective gear for workers, and active truckers and shipping ports to deliver their goods abroad. The global shipping industry has also slowed down to the point that more tonnage of container ships than ever have been left idled around the world. Most BRI infrastructure contracts are given to Chinese companies, most projects rely overwhelmingly on Chinese labor and supplies, and BRI on the whole relies on the availability of massive amounts of cheap credit from Chinese banks. While it will take months to learn the complete effects of COVID-19 for China’s economy, and the Chinese government is clearly working to offset them, COVID-19’s broader economic reverberations themselves will constrain the BRI.
Meanwhile, the Chinese government is trying to bolster its own global governance role by establishing itself as a counter-COVID leader in word and deed. It is attempting to recover from its tarnished image in the word. It may take months to see all the ramifications of the COVID-19 Pandemic that will unfold in BRI countries, and as a result it is too early to tell how perceptions of China and its global governance leadership will be reshaped. However, it is highly doubtful that the BRI can regain its strength in next couple of years.
