“President Xi, much more than his predecessors, is assertive of this idea of the China dream - part of is about national rejuvenation and China rightfully stepping back onto the global stage,” he said. With the BRI, Xi is signaling China’s readiness to reprise a more proactive geopolitical role, according to Harvard Law professor and international trade expert Mark Wu. Though the BRI has been pitched as an antidote to slowing economic growth at home, it is also grounded in a desire to course correct from centuries of Chinese prosperity interrupted by wars, famines and rebellions and to further the country’s stunning economic resurgence that began in the 1970s. So Chinese companies began to seek new overseas markets. That fortune, however, led to domestic overcapacity, and China found itself dealing with issues like millions and millions of tons of extra steel. Though the initiative was formalized in 2013, it was essentially giving a name to strategies that had been at play for years.Īs most of the rest of the world faced financial crisis in 2008, China weathered the worldwide recession with the help of a massive stimulus package. Today, the policy has come to encompass most of China’s overseas investments, from ports and gas pipelines to indoor ski slopes in Australia. When President Xi first announced the framework for what would become the BRI in 2013, his plan was to set up land and sea routes connecting countries across Eurasia - a modern update to the ancient Silk Road. Here’s what you need to know about the BRI. The program’s stated goal is to share China’s staggering growth with its neighbors, but some suspect much less benevolent motives. “He was certainly acknowledging there have been some problems.”įor years, China has pledged billions to finance infrastructure such as ports, pipelines and railways in dozens of countries across Central Asia and beyond. “Xi Jinping’s speech was definitely less triumphant than the speech he gave two years ago,” said Bonnie Glaser, senior adviser for Asia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Six years after the announcement of the BRI, a loose program of loans aimed primarily at funding foreign infrastructure projects, Xi knew China had some explaining to do. The remarks - peppered with promises that the BRI would be cleaner, greener and more transparent - felt markedly less exultant than his first forum in 2017. Earlier this year, Chinese President Xi Jinping addressed a crowd gathered for the second summit of his signature infrastructure policy, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
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