ACTA VIA SERICA

Vol. 6, No. 1, June 2021: 91–118

doi: 10.22679/avs.2021.6.1.004

China’s Belt and Road Initiative and its Implications

for Global Development
MICHAEL DUNFORD*

China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is China’s contribution to the need
for the world to collectively address deficits of peace, development,
governance, and problems relating to climate, the environment and
human health. The rise of China and the BRI do challenge the current
‘rules-based global order’ and the economic dominance and moral,
political, economic, and cultural leadership of the United States and
its allies. However, China’s goal is not hegemony but a multipolar
world in which common values coexist with principles of peaceful
coexistence (including non-interference in the internal affairs of
sovereign states). The evolution of the BRI is outlined, and the ways
in which it reflects Chinese interests are summarized, including its
roles in addressing natural resource dependence and excess capacity,
a transition from investment promotion and factor-intensive growth
to going out and industrial upgrading, going West, and the effective
deployment of China’s foreign exchange assets. Although China does
therefore potentially gain, the BRI is designed so that partners also
gain in a quest for win-win co-operation and mutual benefit. The
values that underlie this approach and the call for a community with
a shared future are compared with competing western values, whose
roots lie in Enlightenment thought and are associated with a record of
colonialism and imperialism. In this light, the article concludes with a
consideration of the global implications of the BRI, the challenges it

* Dr. MICHAEL DUNFORD is Visiting Professor at the Institute of Geographical Sciences and Natural
Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, People’s Republic of China.
92 Acta Via Serica, Vol. 6, No. 1, June 2021

confronts and the likelihood that the unipolar moment will give way to
a multipolar global development path.

Keywords: Belt and Road Initiative, peaceful coexistence, win-win

cooperation, morality and interests, unipolar order, multipolar world

China’s Belt and Road Initiative and its Implications for Global
Development

As is well-known, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) was proposed by Chinese President
Xi Jinping in Kazakhstan and Indonesia in September and October 2013 with suggestions
for jointly building the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk
Road. In China, a Leading Group for Promoting the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) was
established, and in March 2015 the ‘Vision and Actions on Jointly Building Silk Road
Economic Belt and 21st Century Maritime Silk Road’ was published by the Chinese
government (National Development and Reform Commission, Ministry of Foreign
Affairs, and Ministry of Commerce of the People’s Republic of China 2015). In May
2017 and April 2019, the first and second Belt and Road Forums for International Co-
operation were held.
China’s announcement of the BRI reflects its emergence as a major economic
power and its desire to assume an equal place as a major power in a multipolar world
that needs to address deficits of peace, development, and governance (Xi 2017, 77).
China has called for respect for an international order centred on the United Nations
where all independent states are represented and whose core principles include the
sovereign equality of states, non-interference in their internal affairs, and the settlement
of disputes through political and diplomatic means without the threat or use of force.
At the same time, the BRI is in a sense a project that aims to separate economic and,
subsequently, health and climate cooperation from politics and geopolitics.
The rise of China and its international actions do, however, reduce the asymmetric
moral, economic, political, cultural, and financial dominance of western and other G7
countries (Dunford and Liu 2019; Leonard 2016). As a result, they are seen by the United
States (US) and its allies as a zero-sum geoeconomic, geopolitical, and geocultural threat
to their economic dominance, their moral, political, economic, and cultural leadership,
and what is called ‘a rules-based global order’: a set of rules developed in closed, non-
inclusive arrangements by a group of developed capitalist countries that consider
themselves exceptional and that are then imposed at their discretion on everyone else.
This group principally comprises western Europe and countries settled by Europeans,
although the US that has led this group and larger European countries are, at present,
 Dunford: China’s Belt and Road Initiative and its Implications for Global Development 93

seeking to construct a wider set of alliances of what they call ‘democracies’ and the
‘Free World’ under US leadership.1
In the case of Europe in particular, this hostile stance is tempered by the existence
of significant interest groups that wish to cooperate with China (though they may also
fear it as a competitor) and its Russian partner due to the importance of the Chinese
domestic market and production capabilities and Russian energy, while many developing
countries value the potential gains from cooperation with China. Indeed the BRI was
launched in a world which had seen, and continues to see, a long-term decline in real
investment as a share of GDP, despite its spectacular growth in China, making Chinese
investment economically attractive. If one discounts the cost of finance, the cause of
this decline is that ‘the expected return is not sufficient to justify the risk of irreversible
physical investment’(Banerjee, Kearns, and Lombardi 2015; Dunford 2021). The BRI
addresses this issue as it aims to drive investment in infrastructures that remove obstacles
to development, creating opportunities for economic growth that are at present closed
off. These investment opportunities are greatest in developing countries, and it is these
countries that can make the greatest contribution to world growth, creating jobs, raising
incomes, and increasing the extent of markets for goods and services. In this way, the
BRI directly addresses the deficit of development.
For China, there are clear advantages. China can reduce problems of domestic
excess capacity in infrastructure and related industrial sectors, make more effective
use of its immense foreign currency reserves as Chinese banks fund outward foreign
direct investment in civil infrastructure and resource sectors, increase energy security,
reduce the effectiveness of western Thassalocracy and vulnerabilities associated with its
dependence on shipping passing through the narrow Straits of Malacca, establish free
trade agreements that increase the role of the renminbi in international settlements,
create a strategic stability zone through the establishment of good relations with
neighbouring countries, drive western development and the stabilization of Xinjiang
which has suffered from separatist Islamic terrorism, establish land bridges, which
if Beijing, Moscow and Berlin were connected would see a significant shift in the
geopolitical centre of the world, and enable China to play a role alongside other
countries in setting global rules.
As China repeatedly insists, however, the BRI is win-win, which means that it
does involve gains for China, but these gains coexist with gains for China’s partners.
Negotiated and managed economic integration (centred on equality, mutual respect,
and self-reliance) can generate win-win outcomes in which the results of increased

The proposals of the current US administration for a Summit for Democracy, the French and German
1

idea of an Alliance for Multilateralism, and the claim of the European Union that it ‘is the cornerstone
of the multilateral international system’ are all manifestations of western exceptionalism (Lavrov 2021).
94 Acta Via Serica, Vol. 6, No. 1, June 2021

productivity, as a result of economies of scale and increased market size, reductions in

uncertainty and risk, technological spillovers, reductions in social overhead costs, and
increased efficiency of value chains, are shared. Within each country, these gains can be
widely distributed, given appropriate national and local policies.
The rise of China and the BRI are perceived, however, by the US and its allies as
a part of a zero-sum geopolitical, geoeconomic, and geocultural great game (as it is
seen in part through the lenses with which liberal capitalist elites have habitually seen
the world) where the continuation of US global moral, political, economic, and cultural
leadership requires that it prevent the rise of China (and the Russian Federation).
Just as Kennan’s Long Telegram depicted the Soviet Union as an expansionist
power that the US must contain as a prelude to the expected collapse of its economic
and social order, so does the Longer Telegram (Anonymous 2021) published by the
Atlantic Council depict China as a country that seeks to impose its social system on
other countries, and establish a Sinocentric world order that the US and a wide, yet to
be constructed and possibly difficult to construct, set of allies must contain with a view
to eventual regime and system change.
The views of China’s aims are in fact wrong: China’s aims are the rejuvenation of
Chinese (ecological) civilization and a multi-polar world in which each country chooses
its own social model. What lies behind the Longer Telegram instead is the aim of
ensuring the continuation of a unipolar world in which the US acts as a global hegemon
(exercising military dominance, dominating critical technologies, owning the world’s
reserve currency, and setting global values and rules).
The aim of this article is to develop this argument in more detail and to consider
likely outcomes. In the end, it will conclude that a number of difficulties, relating to
the fact that the situation in the world today and in 1945 are utterly different, make it
probable that the BRI will play a major role in creating a new multipolar world in which
peace and common development prevail. To these ends, the evolution of the BRI will
be outlined, identifying developments in the fields of policy coordination, infrastructure
connectivity, international trade, industrial cooperation, financial integration, and people-
to-people bonds. As already mentioned these actions have generated controversies
and the opposition of the US, which considers China an expansionist power whose
discourse conceals its real motives, and whose rise will destroy ‘the rules-based global
order.’ China conversely has argued that the BRI serves to address global deficits of
peace, development, and governance. In the second section, reasons for this conflict
are outlined in more detail and, in particular, attention is paid to the moral claims that
underly the BRI and the ‘western values’ that the US and its allies advocate. Attention is
also paid to the relation between morality and interests. A third section then considers
the economic and political reasons that underlie the BRI, emphasizing that in pursuing
gains (its interests), China genuinely is establishing cooperation arrangements that are
 Dunford: China’s Belt and Road Initiative and its Implications for Global Development 95

win-win: gains for China and gains for its partners that help resolve development and
other problems. The distribution of benefits within each country depends, however,
on self-reliance, institutional capacity, and the self-responsibility of the partners. The
conclusion returns to the question of the controversies raised by the BRI and China’s
rise and explains why the emergence of a multipolar world is almost certain.

On the Surface: The Evolution of the BRI

Essentially the BRI comprises a set of bilateral and multilateral deals between China and
other countries, designed to increase connectivity, trade, investment, people-to-people
relations, financial integration, and policy coordination (Figure 1). Initially targeted at
Asia, Europe, and Africa, it has been extended to embrace the Pacific and Latin America,
and it is aimed at peaceful economic cooperation and development, involving countries
at different stages of development, with different values and different economic,
political, and cultural systems, of whom most are developing countries. All countries are
however welcome to join a project, which China claims, upholds the principles of peace
and cooperation, openness and inclusiveness, extensive consultation, joint contribution,
mutual learning, and mutually shared benefit. Involved are high-level plans and careful
practical implementation to help drive development that is high-quality, equitable, and
green and to help construct a global community with a shared future for mankind (Xi
2017).

Figure 1: BRI priorities. Source: elaborated from (Dunford and Liu 2019; National
Development and Reform Commission, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Ministry of
Commerce of the People’s Republic of China 2015)
96 Acta Via Serica, Vol. 6, No. 1, June 2021

As far as policy coordination is concerned, the BRI has been incorporated into
important documents of international organizations. By the end of March 2019,
the Chinese government had signed 173 cooperation agreements with 125 countries
and 29 international organizations, with the BRI expanding from Asia and Europe
to embrace African, Latin American, Caribbean (in January 2018 the 33 members of
the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) were invited to
participate in the BRI), and South Pacific participants. Coordination and cooperation
expanded to include Digital, Green (with recent decisions to exclude coal-fired power
stations), and Health Silk Roads. Cooperation embraced tax, intellectual property, law
(including international commercial courts established in Xi’an, Shenzhen, and Beijing
and an international BRI Dispute Management Centre), energy and agriculture as well
as maritime and non-maritime trade and investment.

Figure 2. Estimated BRI Project Numbers and Costs

Source: Elaborated from data from de Loisy (2020).

Note: There is not an official list of BRI projects. In the figure, the doughnut plots record the
estimated value of projects, while the labels report the value and/or the number of projects.
 Dunford: China’s Belt and Road Initiative and its Implications for Global Development 97

A multi-level infrastructure framework centred on railways, roads, shipping, aviation,

pipelines, cross-border fibre optic cables, and integrated space information networks, is
taking shape to reduce transport and transaction costs and share information (see Figure
2). Significant progress has been made in the construction of the six initial major Eurasian
international economic cooperation corridors: the New Eurasian Land Bridge, and the
China-Mongolia-Russia, China-Central Asia-West Asia, China-Indochina Peninsula,
China-Pakistan, and Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar economic corridors. At the end
of 2018, the China-Europe rail service (Kratz and Pavlicevic 2019) had connected 108
cities in 16 countries in Asia and Europe, while the number of journeys increased from
17 outward journeys in 2011 to 12,406 in two directions in 2020. Also, a Hungary-Serbia
Railway is under development. Meanwhile, cross-border infrastructure and border ports
connect China, Mongolia, and Russia. In the case of the China-Central Asia-West Asia
Economic Corridor, cooperation has made progress in energy, infrastructure connectivity,
trade, and industrial capacity. China and Iran have drawn on their strengths in various fields
and are strengthening their combined forces in areas such as roads, infrastructure, and
energy. To the southeast, the Kunming-Bangkok Expressway has been completed, while
the China-Laos and China-Thailand railways, and Jakarta-Bandung High-Speed Railway
(Kratz and Pavlicevic 2019) are underway, along with a number of other projects. For
example, cooperation has started on the China-Laos Economic Corridor. Additionally,
the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) concentrates on energy to deal with
Pakistan’s energy supply shortages, transport infrastructure, industrial park cooperation,
and the development of Gwadar Port (Khan & Liu 2019). In the recent past, China has
acquired an interest in or constructed under, Engineering, Procurement, and Construction
(EPC), Build, Operate, and Transfer (BOT), or Build, Buy, Operate, and Transfer (BBOT)
contracts some 184 ports in different parts of the world (Dunford, Liu, and Xue 2020).
And by January 2018, the Arctic had been explicitly incorporated into the BRI, with the
identification of opportunities to develop jointly a Polar Silk Road to increase Arctic
connectivity and sustainable development (PRC (The State Council Information Office
of the People's Republic of China) 2018).
BRI finance is directed at real economy projects (infrastructure, trade, and
investment among others) and involves: (1) national sovereign wealth funds of
participating countries, including the China Investment Corporation established to
diversify and maximize returns on China’s vast foreign exchange reserves; (2) multilateral
development banks, including the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), New
Development Bank (NDB), European Investment Bank (whose European Investment
Fund co-financed the China-EU Co-Investment Fund with China’s Silk Road Fund,
and is expected to provide EUR 500 million to support equity investment) as well newly
established consortia with Eastern and Central Europe, Arab states, and Africa; (3) two
of China’s policy banks established in 1994, the China Development Bank (CDB) and
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the Export-Import Bank of China (CHEXIM); (4) specialized financial institutions such
the Silk Road Fund; and (5) credit provided by China’s state-owned commercial banks.
Guarantees for China’s policy and commercial banks are provided by the China Export
& Credit and Insurance Corporation. At the same time, BRI funding has involved the
development of new financial products such as green bonds and bilateral currency
swaps that have strengthened the role of the renminbi in international payments,
investment, trade, and reserves. The establishment of the CIPS cross-border payment
system has reduced dependence on SWIFT.
Chinese policy banks provided close to half a trillion dollars in development finance
to foreign governments from 2008-2019 (Boston University Global Development Policy
Center, 2021). As an example, in the case of the 2015 Intergovernmental Framework
Agreement between the Republic of Kazakhstan and China on strengthening
cooperation in industrialization and investment, Kazakhstan will implement 55 joint
Kazakhstani-Chinese projects worth $27.6 billion in such industries as metallurgy, oil
and gas processing, chemicals, engineering, energy, transport, construction materials,
and agribusiness. From 2015 to March 2021, 15 projects totaling $3,957 million were
launched, 11 projects totaling $3,774 million were underway, and 29 projects were
under consideration. According to a government of Kazakhstan website, high-tech
export-oriented enterprises and about 20,000 new permanent jobs are to be created,
of which more than 90% are for Kazakhstani citizens. Of all FDI in Kazakhstan since
independence, China accounts for about 6% (Kazakh Invest, 2019).
Closer people-to-people ties involve diverse types of cultural exchange including
arts, film, music, and cultural festivals and expos such as the Silk Road (Dunhuang)
International Cultural Expo along with publishing and media initiatives. A China,
Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan UNESCO World Heritage site bid for Silk Roads:
The Routes Network of Chang’an-Tian Shan Corridor was successful (Wang 2019).
Cooperation also occurs in the fields of education, training, sports, tourism as well as in
health and medicine and disaster relief.

Table 1. BRI Countries, RCEP, EU, and North American shares of Chinese exports and
imports, 2002-19.

Share of Chinese exports (%) Share of Chinese imports (%)

2002 2012 2019 2002 2012 2019
BRI Countries 15.5 24.5 30.5 19.9 27.4 28.0
Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership 28.5 23.7 26.7 42.8 37.8 36.7
European Union incl UK 16.3 16.4 17.1 14.2 12.7 13.4
North America 22.8 18.6 18.2 11.0 9.4 7.3
Source: elaborated from WITS, 2021.
 Dunford: China’s Belt and Road Initiative and its Implications for Global Development 99

An important aim of the BRI is to increase international trade (and in doing so

to go west, accelerate the development of China’s underdeveloped western regions,
alleviate poverty and unemployment, and increase stability especially in Xinjiang
which has suffered from Islamic terrorism). To reduce impedances, China has worked
with other countries to establish trade cooperation agreements, accelerated customs
clearance, agreed on mechanisms for cross-border e-commerce, identified trade
partners for Chinese companies, established free trade zones, and entered free trade
agreements, of which one of the most striking was the recent agreement on the
Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) established to consolidate
and extend five existing ASEAN trade agreements. In 2019, BRI Countries accounted
for 30.5% and 28% of China’s total exports and imports, up from 24.5% and 27.4%
respectively in 2012. RCEP accounted for 36.7% of Chinese imports, indicating an
increasing regionalization of China’s trade.
Not identified initially as a separate priority, industrial cooperation is a critical
dimension of the BRI. Investment is drawn from a variety of sources to encourage
third-party market cooperation and seeks, in particular, to construct industrial supply
and service value chains along with integrated and secure onshore and offshore
production systems. From 2013 to 2018 China’s direct investment in BRI countries
exceeded US$90 billion, and China realized a turnover of US$400 billion in foreign
contracted projects. In 2018, Chinese non-financial direct investment reached US$15.6
billion, up 8.9% year on year and accounting for 13% of China’s total non-financial
FDI. Moreover, BRI contracted project turnover reached US$89.3 billion (53% of total
turnover) (Belt and Road Portal, 2019). At the same time, China has played a major
role in the joint development of industrial cooperation parks and zones, drawing on
China’s own industrial development experience, while generating new sources of tax
revenue and jobs. Examples include the China-Kazakhstan Khorgos International
Border Cooperation Centre (Chubarov 2019), the China-Laos Mohan-Boten Cross-
Border Economic Cooperation Zone, and the China-Belarus Great Stone Industrial
Park (Liu, Dunford, and Liu 2021).

Controversies: China’s Rise, Perceptions of Strategic Rivalry and

Competing Values

The BRI has, however, provoked controversies due largely to opposition from the US
and its allies. This resistance derives first from the rise of China and the challenge it
poses to the US unipolar dominance. China is the second-largest economy in the world,
the manufacturing workshop of the world, the world’s largest exporter, the second
largest exporter of capital, the holder of huge foreign currency reserves (US$ 3.20
100 Acta Via Serica, Vol. 6, No. 1, June 2021

trillion in January 2021, down from a peak of 3.8 trillion in 2014), the owner of a
currency that is increasingly used to settle international payments, a country with a
vast, increasingly affluent and highly coveted domestic market, the country that has led
world economic growth, especially since the 2007 financial crisis, and a country that has
adopted a socialist, rather than a liberal-capitalist development model: China maintains
public ownership as the main pillar of ‘Socialism with Chinese characteristics,’ is a
guided and managed rather than a liberal market economy, and maintains democratic
centralism with a single dominant political party (that governs in cooperation with eight
other democratic parties) instead of competitive multiparty representative politics.
China is Confucian and socialist rather than liberal. China’s success has, moreover,
generated considerable interest in its development model and indicates that economic
progress and effective governance do not require the adoption of western models and
that there are effective alternatives to them.
Furthermore, China’s development path is changing in a new phase of reform and
opening up. These new directions make it clear that it will not adopt western models
(as western countries had initially expected and sought). China is seeking to move
up the value chain. In the past, China largely assembled or manufactured products
designed abroad. The China 2025 programme provides for government subsidies,
investments in research and innovation, targets for increased domestic manufacturing
content, and the encouragement/requirement that foreign companies seeking access to
the Chinese domestic market establish joint ventures with domestic firms to support
the development of smart manufacturing industries (Li 2018; Yeung 2019).2 This
programme is a stepping stone to ensuring that Chinese domestic companies innovate,
design, and produce high-tech products in the emerging industries of the next industrial
revolution (smart manufacturing industries including robotics, new information and
communications technologies, 5G wireless communications, artificial intelligence,
the Internet of Things (IoT), nanotechnology, quantum computing, biotechnology,
3D printing, aviation, new energy, and autonomous and new energy vehicles). China
Standards 2035 is designed to set standards that define how technologies work and
interface with one another, generating license incomes and making China a world leader
in some critical technologies. At the same time, going out and gaining market share
through the construction of Eurasian infrastructure, trade, and investment corridors
will increase China’s role in setting and spreading standards.
For these reasons the US perceives China as a threat to its economic interests and
security, including US control of key technologies, the role of the US dollar, and the

The ten priority sectors were: new advanced information technology; automated machine tools and
2

robotics; aerospace and aeronautical equipment; maritime equipment and high-tech shipping; modern
rail transport equipment; new-energy vehicles and equipment; power equipment; agricultural equipment;
new materials; and biopharma and advanced medical products.
 Dunford: China’s Belt and Road Initiative and its Implications for Global Development 101

ability of the US and its allies to determine and enforce the rules governing the world
order and to shape the economic and political systems and policies of other countries.
At the same time, the US claims that China is an aggressive expansionist power.
As early as November 2011, the US announced a strategic, diplomatic, and
economic pivot to Asia. In 2018, the US national security strategy identified China (with
the Russian Federation, Iran, and North Korea) as the main threats to US ‘influence,
interests, power, and values’ (United States The White House 2017, 2, 25). Great power
competition had become the primary focus of US national economic and security
strategies and is reflected in a range of measures designed to prevent the rise of China,
and address the relative economic decline of the US itself. In particular, the US has
sought to surround China by establishing and strengthening alliances with Europe,
NATO, and the QUAD, on grounds pertaining to ‘human rights’ and security, where
the different sides can easily cooperate, and by extending, where possible, conflict to
economic cooperation with China (and the Russian Federation) in areas such as trade,
access to technologies, equipment and components, and access to US markets.
Europe, however, has interests in Chinese market access (of considerable
importance for Germany’s export-driven economy and its automobile industry) and is
seeking to put in place an EU-China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI),
which its political leadership has signed but whose ratification faces strong political
opposition. Most other countries in the world also have strong interests in economic
cooperation with China. In the case of Europe, these interests push it in the direction
of economic cooperation, even if the European Union, along with the US, want to
set rules that place restrictions on the measures (market access restrictions, use of
state-owned enterprises, market for technology sharing agreements, capital controls,
preferential credit and so on) adopted by economically less developed contender states,
including, in the past, by G7 countries themselves.
In fact, liberal free international trade involves competition among enterprises
rather than countries and depends on a principle of absolute advantage: even in the
comparative advantage story, international prices must change so that an absolute
competitive advantage is established in at least one commodity for exports to occur
(Dunford, Liu, Liu, and Yeung 2014). In a situation where absolute costs differ, the
imposition of free trade on a country with higher-cost producers can be construed
as mercantilist. As Robinson (1977) argued: ‘When Ricardo set out the case against
protection, he was supporting British economic interests. Free trade ruined Portuguese
industry. Free trade for others is in the interests of the strongest competitor in world
markets, and a sufficiently strong competitor has no need for protection at home. Free
trade doctrine, in practice, is a more subtle form of Mercantilism.’ ‘Fair trade’ on the
other hand does deliver mutual benefits.
Alongside economic and political competition, the US and its allies highlight the
102 Acta Via Serica, Vol. 6, No. 1, June 2021

role of values and systems of governance as sources of conflict. Generally speaking,

western countries seek to project and impose their values, although these values are
also often projected selectively, and to legitimize actions that are driven by political and
economic interests. And conversely, when China itself advances certain values, its critics
interpret them as designed merely to conceal China’s real motives.
In the case of western values and their projection, at least there are clear problems.
These values derive from the Graeco-Roman tradition (slave societies) and the
Enlightenment. Enlightenment liberalism emerged as a response to the terrible civil
wars of religion that convulsed Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
It was founded on two premises. First, human beings were considered not as social
animals but as self-interested individuals (man is a wolf to man is the premise of
Hobbes ((1651) 1998, 82-84) Leviathan). The second was that human beings cannot
agree on any definition of the common good (and any such claim is merely a mask to
conceal individual self-interest). Accordingly, a quest for a good society was abandoned
in favour of the least unsatisfactory mode of peaceful co-existence: humankind must
live and let live. If a state exists, it must remain axiologically neutral (values are objects
on which it does not pass prescriptive judgements) and must not impose particular ways
of life. In this situation, only the hidden hand of the market can harmonize competing
interests, while law, which treats all citizens as equal, serves to frame market conduct
and settle disputes. All moral, religious, and philosophical values are confined to the
private sphere, leaving only liberty or freedom as a universal value (along perhaps with
democracy). The consequence is the existence of no limits on what any individual can
do, say, or think other than insofar as they are required to prevent harm or infringement
of the same liberty of others. All other norms are considered arbitrary constructions,
designed to dominate or stigmatize, and must be deconstructed and eventually swept
away in the name of the rights of man, diversity, and the struggle against discrimination.
All can, however, complain, giving rise to a war of all against all, mediated by lawyers. As
collective life necessarily requires some shared moral values and practices, and a shared
culture, the privatization of all values other than liberty, the obligation of governments
to protect all rights (including property rights) from interference (other than that to
which a community consents) means in effect that only the market can bring together
people that the law separates. Beyond it, individuals are increasingly isolated entities
outside of society (Michéa 2018) as is reflected in the decline in social cohesion,
especially in an era of neo-liberalization.
The first difficulty is that Enlightenment voices themselves did not speak with
a single voice in their advocacy of rationality and the freedom of self-interested
individuals (where one must distinguish positive freedom from negative freedom). The
diversity of views and the contradictions between them were, however, squeezed out
in standard liberal accounts. At the same time figures such as Tocqueville and Mill were
 Dunford: China’s Belt and Road Initiative and its Implications for Global Development 103

advocates of colonialism: in relation to China, Mill ((1859) 2003, 136) asserted that
‘if they are ever to be farther improved it must be by foreigners.’ A consequence of
this liberal stance was the eventual nineteenth and twentieth-century replacement of
Enlightenment cosmopolitanism by an aggressive colonialism, a sense of superiority,
and, at times, deeply resented cultural imperialism that came to serve as characteristic
practices of soi-disant liberalism (Losurdo (2006) 2011).
A second is a preoccupation with the individual, rather than the groups and
communities in which human beings have largely spent their lives. Rousseau sought to
‘outline a social order where morals, virtue and human character rather than commerce
and money were central to politics’ and claimed that the way to protect liberty or freedom
was through the general equality of all subjects, and the subordination of the individual
to a community (Mishra 2017, 107, 110), while, as Hegel recognized (Wood 1991, xii-
xiii), ‘a rational society is one where the demands of social life do not frustrate the
needs of individuals, duty fulfils individuality.’ Individuals are free when they ‘identify’
themselves with the institutions of their community and where ‘the institutions of the
community … truly harmonize the state’s universal or collective interest with the true,
objective good of individuals, and individuals … [are] conscious of this harmony.’
These critics of liberalism pointed to the dangers that were to some extent contained
in western societies by nationalism and social welfare until soi-disant liberalism and
neoliberalism drove in the direction of increased individualization, a decline in social
cohesion, increased distrust of political elites, and an inability to act in a unified way.
Of considerable importance, finally, is the way in which historically specific
social institutions (multi-party representative democracy, identity politics with its drive
to remove discriminations between individuals differentiated in terms of increasing
numbers of distinguishing characteristics, systems of private property rights, and liberal
capitalist market economies) are put forward as the only instantiations of democracy
and freedom rights. In this case, specific institutions that are claimed, often questionably,
to embody certain generic principles are smuggled in to replace the generic concepts
involved when the latter are often widely shared across different civilizations. In effect,
specific institutions of western civilizations are put forward as universal values rather
than as possible instances of commonly-held underlying principles.
In January 2021, Xi Jinping (Xi 2021) spoke of the ‘common values of humanity,
i.e. peace, development, equity, justice, democracy, and freedom.’ In China, the word
‘common’ is consciously used to denote a critical distinction between a generic concept
(gōng yì) and a specific concrete instantiation (gè yì) and used in this instance to
challenge the way western liberalism conflates the generic concept (a ‘universal value’)
with specific western instantiations. On the one hand, democracy meaning the rule of
the people, by the people, and for the people can, for example, assume many different
forms. On the other, the dominant roles of money and wealth, and the existence of
104 Acta Via Serica, Vol. 6, No. 1, June 2021

powerful economic elites in western political life, make the democratic claims of these
countries questionable (Miliband 1969, 256-258).

The BRI and China’s Interests

In the last section it was pointed out that the BRI has provoked controversies concerning
the rise of China and the challenge it does pose to a US-led international, liberal ‘rules-
based order’, and it was suggested that in this order, there is a gulf between principles
and practice. In advancing the BRI, China has itself advanced a number of moral
principles deriving from Confucianism, socialism, Marxism, and anti-colonialism. Of
particular importance is the Confucian discussion of the relationship between morality
and interests, or profit (rújiā yì lì guān) (An, Sharp, and Shaw 2021) and contemporary
interpretations of the ‘all under heaven’ (tiān xià), or the whole world system (Zhao
2009) and China’s classical ‘tribute system’ (cháogòng tǐxì). China’s critics have argued,
however, that these values are a veil for China’s ‘expansionist’ interests.
In official documents, the BRI and Chinese foreign policy are premised on the
Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence: mutual respect for each other’s sovereignty
and territorial integrity and the diversity of civilizations; mutual non-aggression; mutual
non-interference in each other’s internal affairs; equality and mutual benefit (win-win
cooperation and fairness and justice); and peaceful coexistence.3 These principles are
diametrically opposed to those of colonialism and the power politics that have involved
the domination of one country by another.4 First put forward in 1953 by Chinese
Premier Zhou Enlai, these principles were subsequently adopted in inter-governmental
agreements, and at the Asian-African Conference convened in Bandung, Indonesia in
1955, were the guiding principles of the Non-Aligned Movement in the 1960s, and were
incorporated in declarations adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1970
and 1974 when developing countries exercised more power.
More recently Xi (2017) argued that the BRI is a Chinese contribution to an
3
All involve the principle of reciprocity. For Polanyi ((1944) 2001) reciprocity differs from redistribution
(altruism) and market exchange (self-interest). Market exchange is seen by Polanyi as a system that
ultimately destroys society and nature, giving rise to a need to constrain and place moral limits on markets.
The neo-liberal counter-claim is that market exchange is voluntary and mutually beneficial, enabling
one individual to get what s/he wants by helping others get what they want. This claim is, however,
an idealized observation confined to the realm of exchange, which itself depends on the existence
of specific underlying social and power relations of production where equality and liberty disappear
(Michéa 2018).
4
In The Prince Machiavelli (2005) identified three ways of dealing with states ‘accustomed to living under
their own laws and in freedom: the first is to destroy them; the second is to go there in person and live;
the third is to allow then to live with their laws, forcing them to pay a tribute and creating an oligarchy
there that will keep the state friendly toward you’ (V, page 19).
 Dunford: China’s Belt and Road Initiative and its Implications for Global Development 105

answer to two questions: what is wrong with the world, and what should we do? What
is wrong is the existence of three deficits mentioned in the introduction: a deficit of
peace (hépíng chìzì); a deficit of development (fāzhǎn chìzì); and a governance deficit
(zhìlǐ chìzì). The latter includes the need to rescue the United Nations Charter, whose
first two articles call for the maintenance of international peace and security and the
sovereign equality of all members. It also involves the need to act collectively to deal
with conflict, development differentials, refugee movements, climate change, and health
issues. And it is driven by a perceived need to grant a more significant role to emerging
powers.
China does of course have certain interests and the BRI, in part, reflects these
interests and the ways in which China’s own development model is changing. In 1999,
China embarked on a Go Out Strategy (zǒu chūqù zhànlüè). Government foreign aid
and loans increased, as did debt forgiveness, leading to a significant redeployment of
China’s international surpluses and foreign exchange reserves. Chinese companies
undertook major overseas infrastructure, industrial, and commercial investments. In
the case of infrastructure investments, the aims were to find markets for infrastructure
sectors, lay the foundations for industrial growth, and, through a subsequent process
of development, increase incomes and create new and larger markets. In other cases,
the aim was to acquire overseas assets and technologies and relocate factor-intensive
industries as part of a strategy of industrial upgrading. In others, it involved a quest for
markets. In yet others, the aim was to address China’s natural resource dependence and
drive resource-led growth and industrial diversification in other economies.
In the new millennium, increases in domestic wage costs and the exchange value
of the renminbi as well as the impact on export demand of the western financial crisis,
trade restrictions, and the COVID-19 pandemic saw China eventually adopt a new
dual-circulation model of growth and embark on the construction of an ecological
civilization. The increases in costs and the desire to upgrade into more sophisticated
industries saw labour-intensive industries start to relocate in China and move offshore
to lower-cost countries. As these industries move, they will leave a space for many other
economies, with lower levels of GDP per capita, to establish labour-intensive industries,
much as Akamatsu’s Flying Geese model suggests (Akamatsu 1962; Ozawa 2011).
A consequence was a restructuring of supply chains as companies made decisions
about where to produce intermediate inputs and final goods, and which, and how
many, suppliers to use. This restructuring is shaped by trade agreements of which the
latest is the recently signed RCEP. China’s interest in RCEP increased as a result of
Obama’s pivot to Asia and Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP). TPP was designed to give
US multinational corporations (MNCs) privileged access to markets in Pacific Asia,
exclude China, and impose US rules so that if China subsequently felt compelled to
seek membership (as in the case of the World Trade Organization from which it was
106 Acta Via Serica, Vol. 6, No. 1, June 2021

long excluded) these rules would give the US an instrument to force concessions out
of China and drive China’s economic governance in the direction the US wanted. For
China, RCEP helps prevent the creation of a wedge between China and Southeast Asia,
while reductions in tariffs and cumulative rules of origin will help solidify regional and
global supply chains (Chandrasekhar 2021).
As a result of its population size and rapid economic growth, China’s energy
consumption and production have increased rapidly, making it the world’s largest
energy consumer (4,870 tons of SCE in 2019) and producer (3,970 million tons of
SCE in 2019).5 In 2019, coal accounted for 57.7%, crude oil for 18.9%, and natural
gas for 8.1% of energy consumption. In the 14th Five Year Plan period, China plans to
reduce energy consumption per unit of GDP by 13.5% and carbon emissions per unit
of GDP by 18% as well as reduce the share of fossil fuels. China will, however, remain
highly dependent on imports of oil and gas to fill the gap between domestic production
and consumption. In the early 1990s, China was a net exporter of crude oil and, in the
current millennium, of natural gas. In 2017, 84.9% of China’s petroleum consumption
came from imports, as did 39.5% of natural gas (National Bureau of Statistics: NBS
2021).
To ensure energy security and acquire technical expertise, China’s national oil and
gas companies (NOGCs) attempted to diversify supply sources and import routes,
making long-term overseas investments and establishing agreements and strategic
partnerships in upstream oil and gas projects with NOGCs in states holding reserves.
Eurasian oil and natural gas reserves are far from centres of consumption so that
transport costs are high. For suppliers, the risks of non-recovery of capital outlays are
high, consumers confront the risks of lock-in to a single supplier and high switching
costs, and transit operators face risks if flows change. These projects, therefore, involve
complex risk-sharing negotiations. Gas suppliers want long-term contracts, stable
prices, and a take-or-pay clause to guarantee revenue streams. Consumers want long-
term contracts with a pricing formula that permits market-driven renegotiation, and/or
an equity share in resource extraction and transport to secure some control over supply
and costs (Ericson 2012).
China’s BRI is in part designed to help address these issues. In the oil sector, assets
have been acquired in the Middle East, North America, Latin America, Africa, Australia,

China’s share of many resources is very low relative to its population share. In 2010, China accounted
5

for 20% of the world’s population, 8% of its cultivated land, 5% of its renewable water resources and
5% of its forest area and stock (Dunford 2015). If all of China’s maritime claims in the South China Sea
with its immense ocean wealth of mineral and maritime resources were upheld, its exclusive economic
zone would amount to less than 3 million km2 compared with 12.236 million for the US, 11.035 million
for France, 8.974 million for Australia, 8.096 million for Russia, 6.805 million for the United Kingdom
and 6.696 for New Zealand (Nolan 2013, 80).
 Dunford: China’s Belt and Road Initiative and its Implications for Global Development 107

and Asia, and Chinese companies have also agreed to oil-for-loan deals and established
pipeline connections with Russia and Kazakhstan, while in 2015 a Myanmar-China
pipeline came into operation, affording a route for Middle Eastern oil that avoided the
Straits of Malacca.
China also sought to increase imports of liquefied natural gas from Southeast Asia,
the Middle East, Australia, North America, and East Africa and pipeline gas via new
and proposed pipelines from Myanmar, neighbouring countries in Central Asia, and
Russia, connecting these countries with an expanding domestic pipeline system. The
Central Asian projects stimulated gas resource exploitation and the development of
local equipment and construction industries and ended the monopsonist position of
Russia in the export of gas from former Central Asian Soviet republics. As for Russia,
it is eager to find new buyers to reduce its dependence on Ukrainian and European
land transit routes and gas markets, to develop its eastern territories, and integrate more
closely with rapidly growing Asian economies.
In September 2019, China signed a twenty-year Cooperation Framework Agreement
with Iraq, under which Iraq will exchange oil for infrastructure reconstruction. In early
2021 it was in force. Imports of oil and gas also play an important role in a twenty-five
year diplomatic and economic pact (Comprehensive Strategic Partnership) of peaceful
cooperation with the Islamic Republic of Iran. As such it is a relationship between
two different cultures, ethnicities, and religions that strongly value their sovereign
independence. An Iran which is subject to US sanctions will sell oil and gas to China
over the next twenty-five years at a discount of some 4% (96% for Iran), after which oil
will likely be phased out due to its climate impacts. China will invest some $16 billion
per year in co-operative ventures and technology and know-how exchange with Iran’s
predominantly state-owned and state-controlled enterprises in energy, infrastructure,
banking, and a multiplicity of other sectors, with trade expanding to $600 billion in ten
years. This and two other agreements signed on the same occasion establish Iran as an
indispensable node in China’s BRI. A responsibility of Iran and China is to ensure that
generated incomes are distributed widely in their own countries. Not only does this
agreement help ensure China’s energy needs and open up the Iranian market. It may
also undermine the role of the petrodollar (with the establishment of a new China-Iran
bank) on which the US dollar’s pre-eminence and overvaluation depend.
Chinese initiatives also reflect an increasing realization of the dangers of over-
reliance on the US dollar and Western-controlled payment systems, especially since
the 2007 financial crisis and US quantitative easing. As payment systems are linked
to trading systems, the renminbi and the new digital renminbi (Digital Currency
Electronic Payment project) may challenge the supremacy of the US dollar. China’s
State Administration of Foreign Exchange has already decided to cooperate actively
with the BRI, which provides an entry point for the internationalization of the digital
108 Acta Via Serica, Vol. 6, No. 1, June 2021

renminbi in the settlement of payments, the provision of loans, international transfers,

and foreign exchange transactions. At present, China’s cross-border payment system,
CIPS, partners and competes with SWIFT. Greater use of the CIPS, instead of the
Belgium-based SWIFT system, would reduce exposure of China’s global payments data
to the US, a step that the US depicts as increasing digital authoritarianism.
These ‘permanent and strategic’ relations with Iran were established during a visit
by State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi to a number of West Asian countries
including Oman, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and Iranian rival Saudi Arabia
from which China purchases oil, and which is perhaps looking to China as a partner
to reduce dependence on the US. On this visit, Wang Yi called for new independent
development paths for the Middle East suited to their regional realities and ‘outside the
shadows of big-power rivalry.’ More specifically, he put forward a Third Way and a ‘five-
point initiative’ involving adherence to mutual respect (non-interference in the internal
affairs of other countries), equity, and justice (the Palestine issue), non-proliferation
(the Middle East as a nuclear weapon-free zone), collective security (a proposal to
hold in China a multilateral dialogue conference for regional security in the Gulf), and
development cooperation (the BRI and Free Trade Agreements). Alongside meeting
its energy needs, China has accordingly proposed a new development and governance
path that could transform the geopolitical and geoeconomic landscape of the Middle
East (Wang 2021).
In going out, China was not just relocating labour-intensive industries, seeking access
to resources such as energy, and possibly establishing new governance arrangements.
Also involved was a major wave of Chinese infrastructure investment and a desire to
diversify its reserves and use its international trade surpluses and savings to acquire
assets and advanced technologies in other countries.
China’s experience shows that trade and industrial growth require massive,
possibly state-led, investments in infrastructure (energy and power, transport and
telecommunications, rural and agricultural development infrastructure, water supply
and sanitation, environmental protection, urban development, logistic centres and
economic development zones) and that infrastructure investments require related
industrial capacity - construction materials, steel and so on. These investments pave
the way for industrial development, the growth of incomes and markets, and social
development, including poverty alleviation.
As a result of its own experience, China acquired considerable strength in
infrastructure provision. Moreover, the onset of the financial crisis saw China launch a
powerful fiscal stimulus and emerge as the main engine of global growth. A consequence
was the subsequent appearance of excess capacity in many industries (including
industries associated with high emissions and industrial pollution) and relatively high
levels of subnational government debt. To address these problems, China adopted
 Dunford: China’s Belt and Road Initiative and its Implications for Global Development 109

domestic supply-side structural reform (cutting overcapacity, especially in steel, iron,

and coal, destocking housing, and deleveraging via debt-equity swaps and cuts in costs),
while infrastructure companies sought contracts in other parts of the world, alleviating
problems of excess capacity and also relocating energy-intensive and polluting industries
(as more developed countries had done in the past). These investments provided the
infrastructure that helps China’s partners find outlets for vital raw materials needed by
China and other countries, establish economic development zones, develop industries,
acquire new sources of tax revenue, and establish employment channels. At the same
time, they create new markets by extending the march of modernization to under-
developed Asian and African countries that find it extremely difficult to get loans to
modernize their economies (Dunford et al. 2020).
An example is the $62 billion of infrastructure investment involved in CPEC, which
links Pakistan's Karachi and northwestern Peshawar, and runs through the populated
provinces of Punjab and Sindh, with connections north to Kashgar in Xinjiang
Province and southwest to Gwadar and on to Iran. The programme of investments
was designed to overcome energy shortages: in 2014 demand stood at 16,814 MW, and
supply at 10,800 MW. Of the population of 200 million people, 144 million suffered
regular electricity cuts and high costs, so the programme sought to add 10,000 MW
of coal, hydro, solar, and wind-generated electrical energy, and to install transmission
infrastructure. (These projects do include fossil-fuel energy projects condemned by the
critics of China and its partners, though in early 2021, with a greater emphasis on a
Green BRI, China started to screen out coal-fired stations). It also provided for road,
rail, and mass transit investments. The CPEC also promoted industrial cooperation, the
construction of special economic zones, and the development of Gwadar Port (Khan
and Liu 2019).
So far, 22 projects costing $18.9 billion have been largely completed. Islamabad
needs to pay $6.017 billion (concessional loans of $5.874 billion for major 20 to 25-year
transport infrastructure projects at a composite interest rate of 2.29% with a seven-
year grace period) for relevant CPEC projects over some 20 years. China also provided
$143 million in interest-free loans for the construction of the Expressway East Bay in
Gwadar and free aid for some livelihood projects. Chinese companies have invested
$12.8 billion in energy projects in Pakistan, including $9.8 billion from commercial banks
with an interest rate of about 5%. These projects are commercial, and Pakistan will
need revenue-generating investments to pay back the infrastructure costs. Government
debt stands at $106 billion (in a country running a balance of payments deficit), with
47% due to the International Monetary Fund and the Asian Development Bank, and
18% to the Paris Club.
China is often said to set debt traps. These claims have been challenged (Brautigam
2020). In the past, structural adjustment imposed by western-controlled financial
110 Acta Via Serica, Vol. 6, No. 1, June 2021

institutions required poor countries to reduce spending on health, education, and

infrastructure, minimize the state’s role, privatize domestic industries, increase labour
market flexibility, and reduce regulatory controls on foreign investment and ownership
of national resources to the advantage of developed country MNCs. Interestingly,
these claims about China are similar to claims made about the US in the past. In a
semi-fictional autobiographical novel, Perkins (2004) explained that his work for a
Boston engineering consultancy starting in the 1970s was to convince the political and
financial leadership of underdeveloped countries to accept substantial development
loans for large construction and engineering projects from the World Bank and USAID.
The projects were contracted to US companies. Domestically, the projects primarily
benefitted developing country elites. Although the companies involved were private,
Perkins claimed that the National Security Agency was involved. In the course of time,
unrepayable loans gave the US government political influence over less developed
countries, and US companies access to natural resources.
Alongside Gwadar, China is involved in other port projects, including Hambantota
in Sri Lanka, generating Indian concerns about Chinese involvement (Brautigam 2020).
Then in March 2021, the Sri Lankan government issued a Letter of Intent to the Indian
Adani Ports and Special Economic Zones Ltd (APSEZ) to develop and operate the West
Container Terminal in Colombo in a public-private consortium on a Build, Operate,
and Transfer basis for 35 years. The project is situated alongside a massive Chinese-
Colombo port project and will help make Sri Lanka a strategic global trans-shipment
hub, adjacent to the vast Indian market. India’s involvement is a clear indication that
there is space for many actors, and that some, at least, of India’s concerns about the
China factor were misplaced (Bhadrakumar 2021).

Conclusions

By the end of the first decade of the new millennium, China had emerged as a major
economic power whose size and impact could not be concealed. In November 2012,
a new Chinese leadership came into office with a new vision: China should assume an
equal place as a major power in a multipolar world in which all countries had the right
to choose their own development model.
In a situation in which the world confronted three major deficits (Xi 2017, 77): a
deficit of peace, development, and governance, and which was in need of new drivers,
China called for a world order open to all and centred on cooperation, commerce, and
economic development under the guiding principle of no interference in the domestic
affairs of sovereign states. China’s BRI, and the call for a China-ASEAN (Xi 2013),
and, subsequently, a world ‘community with a shared future’ (mìngyùn gòngtóngtǐ), are
 Dunford: China’s Belt and Road Initiative and its Implications for Global Development 111

important components of China’s contribution to addressing these deficits.

In the first section, the surface dimensions of the BRI and its evolution were
outlined. At a macro scale, the BRI is a multi-scalar cooperation platform open to all
countries and involves coupling national development strategies, harnessing comparative
strengths, and establishing strong complementarities. In many areas such cooperation is
vital. To reduce carbon emissions, all countries will have to adopt new sources of energy
and replace their entire fleet of oil-powered vehicles. An undertaking of this magnitude
requires cooperative quests for solutions to avoid the duplication of investments, the
waste of resources, and the stalled diffusion of intellectual property and technologies
to which a Green BRI could contribute.6 At a mesoscale, the BRI aims to build, jointly,
six land economic corridors and three maritime routes. At a micro-scale, it involves a
huge number of supporting nodes (major cities and industrial parks, medical centres,
community learning centres, and scientific and cultural institutions).
As explained in the penultimate section, the BRI does reflect some Chinese interests.
As China repeatedly insists, however, it is win-win, which means that it involves gains
for China and for China’s partners. Negotiated and managed economic integration that
is centred on principles of equality, mutual respect, and self-reliance can generate win-
win outcomes as long as the gains from increases in productivity, that result from scale
economies and increased market size, declines in uncertainty and risk, spillovers from
investments, reductions in logistic and social overhead costs, and increased efficiency
of value chains, are shared. The gains and the ways they are shared will depend on
equitable relationships among the partners, effective governance, and the choices each
partner makes concerning the extent to which the benefits are diffused and affected
communities are compensated.
These developments do, however, reduce asymmetric moral, economic,
political, and financial interdependencies, the vulnerabilities that they create, and the
possibility of exploiting them politically (Dunford and Liu 2019; Leonard 2016).
These interdependencies are related to the capacity of the US and its allies to set and
enforce global rules, the role of the US currency, including the use of fiat dollars to
acquire assets throughout the world, and its current control of much of the intellectual
property associated with the computer and information technology revolution and
pharmaceutical technologies as well as its military strength and capacity to exercise
soft power. It is because the rise of China and the BRI, along with related bilateral and
multilateral integration processes currently underway in Eurasia such as the construction
of the Eurasian Economic Union, contribute to a decline in the asymmetric power and

Researchers at Tsinghua University’s Institute for Climate Change and Sustainable Development
6

(ICCSD) pointed out that China alone would have to invest $20 trillion from 2020 to 2050 to reshape
China’s coal-dependent electrical power system to reach the goal of a 1.5-degree limit on global warming
(Ma 2020).
112 Acta Via Serica, Vol. 6, No. 1, June 2021

exorbitant privilege, especially of the North Atlantic alliance, that they have provoked
intense controversies and given rise to containment strategies. In order to preserve the
moral, political, and economic leadership of the US and its allies, the US considers
that it must prevent the rise of China and the Russian Federation along with Eurasian
integration. In these circumstances, Beijing and Moscow have called for peaceful
coexistence among nations and for cooperation, mutual respect, sovereign equality, and
above all, adherence to international law and the United Nations Charter in a multipolar
world.
Although the US oversaw the collapse of the Soviet Union after the First Cold
War, the conditions that prevail in the early decades of the twenty-first century differ
radically from those that prevailed when Kennan wrote his Long Telegram. The US
aim of ensuring the continuation of a unipolar world in which it acts as a global
hegemon (exercising military dominance, dominating critical technologies, owning the
world’s reserve currency, and setting and enforcing global values and rules) encounters
many difficulties, though contestation will, without doubt, prove disruptive. Compared
with 1945, the relative strength and cohesion of the US and other G7 countries
have declined to an extraordinary extent. At the same time, their reconstruction and
industrial development, without which all that lies ahead is further relative decline,
require massive investment at a time when debt levels are already excessive, and the
acquisition of new debt is unattractive. In any case, reconstruction of US and advanced
country infrastructure and industry would depend on cooperation with China, with
which these countries are inextricably connected economically (where China would
no doubt cooperate on equitable terms as the US and advanced country markets are
important for China). Moreover, in current circumstances, the alliance strategy of
the US, which can, without doubt, give rise to all kinds of instability, has very little
chance of ultimate success. The contemporary relation between China and Russia has
an extraordinary degree of strategic depth and cannot easily be disrupted. In the most
critical parts of the world, centred on Eurasia, on ASEAN, and the Indian and Pacific
Oceans, the importance of economic and commercial ties with China will mean that
these countries will remain at least equidistant between relations with the US, and their
own independent relations with China, while in Europe itself, economic considerations
suggest that cooperation with China and the Russian Federation are of vital importance
if it is to address economic performance issues (Dunford, 2021). At the same time,
however, the pursuit by the European Union of independent policies that connect it
more closely with China and Russia would destroy the rationale of the North Atlantic
alliance, leaving the US to deal with a seemingly irresolvable contradiction.
Most importantly, the depiction of China as a country that seeks to impose its social
system on other countries and establish a Sinocentric world order is seriously mistaken.
In some economically advanced countries there are grounds for concern as China (and
 Dunford: China’s Belt and Road Initiative and its Implications for Global Development 113

other East Asian countries) proved far more effective in dealing with the COVID-19
pandemic, while the economic growth record of developed capitalist countries compares
very unfavourably with that of China, undermining the attractiveness of the western
institutions that western countries want to impose on the rest of the world. And yet, at
least since the 2007 financial crisis, western institutions have not served these countries
well. Maybe it is time for the western and western settled countries that have dominated
the world for most of the last 500 years to accept that the world has changed, to reform
themselves so as to address their economic difficulties and social divisions, and take
their place as equal partners in a new multipolar world in which peace and common
development prevail.

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank two anonymous referees and an editor for some very
helpful suggestions concerning the organization of this article.

Received April 13, 2021, Revised May 14, 2021, Accepted May 16, 2021
114 Acta Via Serica, Vol. 6, No. 1, June 2021

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