For Xi, the BRI serves as pushback against the much-touted U.S. To date, 147 countries-accounting for two-thirds of the world’s population and 40 percent of global GDP-have signed on to projects or indicated an interest in doing so.Įxperts see the BRI as one of the main planks of a bolder Chinese statecraft under Xi, alongside the Made in China 2025 economic development strategy. To date, 147 countries-accounting for two-thirds of the world’s population and 40 percent of global GDP- have signed on to projects or indicated an interest in doing so. To accommodate expanding maritime trade traffic, China would invest in port development along the Indian Ocean, from Southeast Asia all the way to East Africa and parts of Europe.Ĭhina’s overall ambition for the BRI is staggering. ![]() Xi subsequently announced plans for the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road at the 2013 summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Indonesia. (In 2018, the Asian Development Bank estimated that the continent faces a yearly infrastructure financing shortfall of over $900 billion.) In addition to physical infrastructure, China has funded hundreds of special economic zones, or industrial areas designed to create jobs, and encouraged countries to embrace its tech offerings, such as the 5G network powered by telecommunications giant Huawei. Such a network would expand the international use of Chinese currency, the renminbi, and “ break the bottleneck in Asian connectivity,” according to Xi. Xi’s vision included creating a vast network of railways, energy pipelines, highways, and streamlined border crossings, both westward-through the mountainous former Soviet republics-and southward, to Pakistan, India, and the rest of Southeast Asia. ![]() They are also heavily dependent on Russia, particularly for remittances, which made up nearly one-third of the gross domestic product (GDP) of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan before the Russian war in Ukraine scattered remittance-sending migrant laborers. Use of the route peaked during the first millennium, under the leadership of first the Roman and then Byzantine Empires, and the Tang Dynasty (618–907 CE) in China.īut the Crusades, as well as advances by the Mongols in Central Asia, dampened trade, and today Central Asian countries are economically isolated from each other, with intra-regional trade making up a small percentage of all cross-border commerce. Valuable Chinese silk, spices, jade, and other goods moved west while China received gold and other precious metals, ivory, and glass products. Those routes extended more than four thousand miles to Europe.Ĭentral Asia was thus the epicenter of one of the first waves of globalization, connecting eastern and western markets, spurring immense wealth, and intermixing cultural and religious traditions. ![]() The original Silk Road arose during the westward expansion of China’s Han Dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE), which forged trade networks throughout what are today the Central Asian countries of Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, as well as modern-day India and Pakistan to the south. President Joe Biden has maintained his predecessors’ skeptical stance towards Beijing’s actions, but Washington has struggled to offer participating governments a more appealing economic vision. ![]() Meanwhile, the United States shares the concern of some in Asia that the BRI could be a Trojan horse for China-led regional development and military expansion. Some analysts see the project as an unsettling extension of China’s rising power, and as the costs of many of the projects have skyrocketed, opposition has grown in some countries. How Will China Respond to Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen’s Visit to the United States?
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