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China’s Maritime Silk Road Initiative

China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has both a land-based and a maritime component. This graphic provides an overview of the maritime element, the Maritime Silk Road Initiative (MSRI) which connects China to Europe and Africa via the Middle East. For an insight into the BRI in the Middle East, including its implications for China’s impact on the region, read Lisa Watanabe’s CSS Analyses in Security Policy here.

Categories
CSS Blog

China´s Maritime Silk Road Initiative

China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has both a land-based and a maritime component. This graphic provides an overview of the maritime element, the Maritime Silk Road Initiative (MSRI) which connects connects China to Europe and Africa via the Middle East. For an insight into the BRI in the Middle East, including its implications for China’s impact on the region, read Lisa Watanabe’s recent CSS Analyses in Security Policy here.

Belt and Road Initiative 2.0: ‘Qualitatively’ Different?

Image courtesy of nali_wike/Pixabay

This article was originally published by the East-West Center (EWC) on 11 July 2019.

Following five years of periodic controversies and criticism – some factual, others contrived – President Xi Jinping used the Belt and Road (BRI) Forum in April to set the agenda for the next five years of his hallmark project. At the forum’s second edition, meant to promote a “stronger partnership network,” the Chinese leader pledged to “clean up,” stressed “zero tolerance” to corruption, and emphasized readiness to adopt “internationally acceptable” standards in the bidding process of BRI projects in the future. This language indicates Beijing’s openness to constructive criticism and willingness to objectively tweak some inherent weaknesses in the strategy and implementation mechanisms for the BRI during the 2013-2018 period. It also sets the stage for the start of “BRI 2.0,” where the stress is likely to be on the qualitative, rather than just quantitative, attributes. The following are some analytical pointers on how BRI 2.0 is likely to be different from version 1.0, especially keeping in mind what Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi referred to as a “high-quality” shift from “big freehand” to “fine brushwork” in planning BRI’s future projects.

In China, a New Political Era Begins

Image courtesy of Kurious/Pixabay.

This article was originally published by Geopolitical Futures on 19 October 2017.

Blending the policies of his predecessors, the Chinese president is trying to liberalize with an iron fist.

The world has changed since modern China was founded, and it seems that China, not for the first time, is changing with it. When Mao Zedong established the republic in 1949, having fought a civil war to claim it, China was poor and unstable. To reinstate stability he ruled absolutely, his government asserting itself into most other state institutions. Private property was outlawed, and industrialization was mandated, from the top down, in an otherwise agrarian society. The goal was to disrupt China’s feudal economic system that enriched landlords but left most of the rest of the country in poverty. Mao’s techniques ensured compliance with government policies, but they did little to improve the country’s underdeveloped economy. This is what we consider the first era of communist rule.

The Twists and Turns along China’s Belt and Road

Image courtesy of Pilar Rubio Remiro/Flickr. (CC BY 2.0)

This article was originally published by International Crisis Group on 2 October 2017.

“The project of the century” is how Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi touted the Belt and Road Initiative to the world when addressing the UN General Assembly on 21 September. It was only the latest in a series of pronouncements and events, including a Belt and Road Forum in Beijing in May and the ninth BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) summit in Xiamen in early September, choreographed to position China at the vanguard of a new stage of globalisation. Step by step, China is demonstrating that the Belt and Road is now the guiding framework for its international economic statecraft.