Bodog Poker|Welcome Bonus_and its competition with http://www.wita.org/atp-research-topics/belt-and-road-initiative/ Thu, 02 May 2024 14:56:00 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.6.1 /wp-content/uploads/2018/08/android-chrome-256x256-80x80.png Bodog Poker|Welcome Bonus_and its competition with http://www.wita.org/atp-research-topics/belt-and-road-initiative/ 32 32 Bodog Poker|Welcome Bonus_and its competition with /atp-research/bri-trade/ Fri, 01 Dec 2023 15:00:48 +0000 /?post_type=atp-research&p=44271 At the end of November, China’s Belt and Road Construction Leadership Group released a ten year plan for the next phase of the BRI. This comes a month after Beijing celebrated ten...

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At the end of November, China’s Belt and Road Construction Leadership Group released a ten year plan for the next phase of the BRI. This comes a month after Beijing celebrated ten years of China’s Belt and Road Initiative by hosting the Third BRI Forum with attendees from 150 countries. This special edition of the Global China Competition Tracker looks at the BRI’s first decade of evolution, assesses its impact, and asks what the future of Xi Jinping’s signature foreign policy initiative might look like. 

The BRI has had considerable influence on China, on BRI host countries and the world. It would be wrong to see it as a declining force simply because Beijing is allocating less finance to BRI projects: many of the BRI’s initial goals were achieved early on in its first decade. The BRI has evolved over time to suit Beijing’s strategic goals. This special edition of the tracker examines the BRI’s impact on trade flows through the ports sector – critical logistics nodes along the BRI. We look at the ports built, bought, operated and used by China’s state-owned national champions. 

First, bodog casino  maps out China’s footprint across global port ecosystems in a detailed map. Banach, who is MERICS Futures Fellow, explains the more deeply Chinese SOE’s are entrenched in a port, the more strongly it is pulled into China’s orbit at the expense of trade with other partners. 

Second, MERICS Lead Analyst Jacob Gunter builds on Banach’s quantitative analysis with a qualitative look at how China’s involvement in ports develops. Gunter details China’s presence in Mediterranean and Northern European shipping ecosystems and how ports can spread distortions emanating from China’s own economic model. He examines how port networks create potential dependency and influence risks. 

Banach and Gunter then take a closer look at four Mediterranean ports with Chinese participation. In each case study, they assess Chinese SOEs’ strategic and commercial success or failure. The case studies look at port holdings or operations in Greece, Spain, Algeria, and Israel and offer a way to benchmark Beijing’s desired outcomes and how far they are being achieved. 

Finally, they suggest what the future of the BRI might look like, drawing on President Xi Jinping’s speech to Third BRI Forum and their own research. The future BRI can be expected to leverage its extensive built infrastructure further, while shifting focus towards green energy and telecoms equipment. China’s green transition industries suffer from overcapacity, so they need export outlets, while telecoms giants like Huawei and ZTE must secure and expand their footprints in more neutral markets to compensate for restrictions on their activities in liberal democratic markets. 

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The BRI was officially introduced in 2013 as part of Xi Jinping’s agenda to expand China’s global influence. However, the initiative had been gathering speed since 1999, first as the “Go Out Policy” (which encouraged Chinese businesses to find partners in international markets), then as the “Going Global Strategy.” By the time Xi Jinping officially baptized the BRI as “One Belt One Road,” Chinese firms had secured terminal operating contracts at ports in 14 countries (in order of agreement: United Kingdom, Argentina, Pakistan, Belgium, Malta, Poland, Spain, Egypt, Angola, United States, Greece, Sweden, Nigeria, Sri Lanka and Togo). In the last 10 years, the network of global influence has expanded to over 75 countries. 

To better understand how this network of Chinese owned, operated or built port terminals affects world trade, we identified changes in exports, imports, and total trade flows after signing a contract. Our findings suggest China’s port network has played a significant role in reshaping international competition. The results indicate that terminal operating contracts have a significant impact on bilateral trade with China, while a completed port project will temporarily increase trade with the rest of the world (RoW).

Where Chinese firms operate ports, they appear to modify the host countries’ trade toward China and away from former trade partners. By contrast, infrastructure projects appear to bring temporary economic benefits to host economies that fade away about four years after completion. For the BRI’s trade network to function as a new development model, it would need to bring substantial benefits to host countries. While the BRI has generated extensive discussion and geopolitical debate, detailed analysis of its economic effects has been limited. At present, it remains uncertain whether the benefits of these relationships outweigh the risks, or if the new model of interconnectivity benefits host countries as much as they benefit China. 

These are not abstract matters, as Germany recently allowed Chinese state-owned shipping giant COSCO to take a significant stake in the port of Hamburg. An expansive presence in Mediterranean ports has also garnered substantial attention, as it could offer strategic advantages for China among growing tensions between Europe and Asia.

The Maritime Silk Road stretches further than its official footprint

China’s reach extends far beyond the BRI’s official membership boundaries and is fortified by its prolific investment in overseas ports. This ambitious expansion fits within China’s broader global economic strategy. Although the official Maritime Silk Road (MSR) serves as a primary channel for international flows, additional port contracts with Chinese firms can be considered tributaries along a wider network of influence. Countries along this extended MSR can transact relatively easily with Chinese firms due to shared standards and practices along the supply chain.

The BRI’s stated objectives include policy coordination, facilities connectivity, unimpeded trade, financial integration, and people-to-people bonds. This reduces uncertainty as well as the transaction costs of trade between partners, which can manifest as fees, commissions, insurances and legal expenses, along with the time required to procure these services. In a world increasingly interconnected by trade, transaction costs play a pivotal role in shaping economic relationships. 

China’s port activities influence Global Trade Networks

Our estimates suggest that this growing constellation of Chinese port activities has had a significant impact on total trade with China over the past 20 years. Typically, we see a trend towards more exports to China as control over terminal operation increases. This means that Chinese firms are buying a greater share of their goods from these countries than ever before. Furthermore, these results are not affected by a country’s development status. Regardless of GDP per capita, the changes are significant and consistent.

All participation is not created equal. Investment projects, property acquisitions and operating agreements for port terminals by Chinese SAEs are not equivalent events. As the level of control at the port increases, total trade also increases with China. Port construction projects show a different pattern. As Chinese investment increases, so does trade with the rest of the world, at least temporarily. The statistically significant increases to total trade flows begin six years prior to completion and, on average, turn negative four years after completion. This suggests that trade increases may come from the surge in materials, equipment and project requirements to actually develop the terminal rather than a reduction in trade costs.

Unless a Chinese SAE is involved in port operations, there are no measurable long-term changes to trade flows after a port development project. This is surprising, as gains from trade are often the main motivation for large maritime infrastructure projects. However, there is evidence that the short-term increases to total trade during the time of construction do generate temporary economic benefits for host economies. 

Key findings from empirical analysis of Chinese port activities

A port contract with a Chinese firm does not predict an increase in trade between other members of the extended MSR. This implies that there is no significant reduction in costs between these trade partners and that cost savings are a result of a reduction in transaction barriers between host economies and Chinese markets. Pricing data would be needed to confirm whether host countries have shifted business away from low-cost providers, but trade flows indicate that trade is being diverted away from their former trade partners in favor of trade with Chinese firms.

  • Total trade with China is expected to increase about 21 percent after a terminal operating contract is signed and exports to China usually increase more than imports.
  • Expected increases are magnified if Chinese firms have a controlling interest in all terminals, in at least one port in the country. In these cases, over a 12-year period, exports to China would be expected to increase by 76 percent, whereas imports from China would be expected to increase by 36 percent.
  • Host countries that allow Chinese firms to operate all terminals in at least one port saw a 19 percent reduction in exports to the rest of the world (RoW) during the analysis period.
  • Chinese firms buy more goods than they sell to the host countries after operating agreements are signed and much of the cost savings go to the Chinese.
  • There is no measurable effect on overall trade between other members of the trade network, regardless of whether China is included in the estimation.
  • Completed infrastructure projects bring no significant long-term effects. Agreeing to and completing an infrastructure development project predicts a temporary increase in trade with all partners during the duration of a project, but these effects do not last.

These results indicate that hypothetically, a country could maximize the economic benefits of cooperation by allowing Chinese SAEs to operate one or two port terminals, while also negotiating regular maritime infrastructure development projects that diversify import and export partner during construction. However, this constellation omits the serious financial and geopolitical risks of unintended lock-in effects and challenges that can arise during long-term operating contracts. 

Geopolitical risks need consideration 

It would be too ambitious to claim that China is indeed giving the world a new model of international development, although it appears their maritime activities have certainly modified conditions in global markets. China’s network of SAEs acts as a quasi-supranational organization seeking to establish a global footprint. Host economies may gain from greater trade, increased commerce and cheaper goods but the price tag includes institutional lock-in and loss of diversity in trade partners.

For policymakers, the challenge is to find a balance between benefiting from economic interdependence and mitigating the hazards in a geopolitically unstable world. In the best-case scenario, any trade diversion would benefit network members by reducing total trade costs; however, in real terms, an undiversified supply chain is a national security risk. The more a country becomes economically dependent on another, the less agency it will have in making economic decisions. Caution is advisable.

MERICS China Global Competition Tracker No. 4 2023

To read the full article as it is published on MERICS’ website, click here.

To read the full article, click here.

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Bodog Poker|Welcome Bonus_and its competition with /atp-research/us-china-infrastructure-diplomacy/ Tue, 23 Nov 2021 15:04:07 +0000 /?post_type=atp-research&p=31452 Neglected for decades by developed countries and international development institutions, infrastructure has garnered renewed attention. With the global infrastructure gap estimated to exceed US$40 trillion, the need for more infrastructure...

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Neglected for decades by developed countries and international development institutions, infrastructure has garnered renewed attention. With the global infrastructure gap estimated to exceed US$40 trillion, the need for more infrastructure is overwhelming.

China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), inescapable due to its size and ambition, is also renewing attention on infrastructure projects. China’s promise to spend trillions of dollars in infrastructure through the initiative, ostensibly to strengthen global trade routes, has raised much concern in many countries and triggered the ideation of equally ambitious plans for infrastructure development.

Chief among the competitors is the United States. At the 2021 G7 Summit, the US launched the Build Back Better World initiative, or B3W. Established to build infrastructure, B3W is also expected to set new standards that better reflect the values of Western democracies, and balance against the BRI and China’s global reach. The questions many are asking: Will the initiative be successful? Can or should the US compete with China in infrastructure diplomacy? Can the B3W and the BRI collaborate?

In this essay, Maria Adele Carrai of New York University Shanghai compares China’s BRI and the US-led B3W, focusing on the differences between the two approaches and the limitations of B3W to compete with the BRI. Carrai argues that the need is urgent for the US and China to better coordinate international infrastructure investments, effectively allocate resources, and avoid duplicates or overlapping of initiatives. Most importantly, they must consider the real needs of the developing world rather than simply Bodog Poker fall prey to geopolitics and strategic considerations.

Can and should the US compete with China in global infrastructure financing - Maria Adele Carrai - Hinrich Foundation - November 2021

To read the full report from The Hinrich Foundation, please click here.

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Bodog Poker|Welcome Bonus_and its competition with /atp-research/is-china-a-developing-country/ Mon, 31 May 2021 14:58:54 +0000 /?post_type=atp-research&p=28242 China designates itself as a developing country in the World Trade Organization and is classified as such by the World Bank based on the income per capita criterion. This enables...

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China designates itself as a developing country in the World Trade Organization and is classified as such by the World Bank based on the income per capita criterion. This enables China to avoid many of the responsibilities and disciplines applied to rich countries in international organizations, while qualifying for preferential treatment in some instances. Yet China is already the world’s largest economy by some measures and is home to nearly as many companies as the United States in the Forbes list of the 500 largest companies. China is the largest producer of electric vehicles, has the global lead in important technologies such as 5G, and is among the leaders in artificial intelligence, facial recognition, electronic payment systems, and space exploration. It is the largest official creditor to developing countries. Understandably, China’s continued self-designation as a developing country is a major source of tension between China and the United States and its allies. 

What to make of this? Is China really a developing country? And does it matter whether it is or is not? This brief shows that—despite its many achievements—China remains a developing country by any plausible criterion. Yet China is exceptional since it is the first time in history that a relatively poor nation plays a dominant role in the global economy.

China’s exceptionalism has major implications. China should become more aware of the global repercussions of its policies, while the United States and its allies need to understand better China’s limitations and moderate their expectations of China. I discuss what this means in three policy arenas: macroeconomics, development assistance, and climate. In a companion paper, I will tackle another issue where China’s underdevelopment matters, and which is especially complex: trade policies.

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To read the full policy brief from the Policy Center for the New South, please click here.

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Bodog Poker|Welcome Bonus_and its competition with /atp-research/weaponizing-the-belt-and-road/ Tue, 08 Sep 2020 17:37:43 +0000 /?post_type=atp-research&p=22923 China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), launched by President Xi Jinping in 2013, is a massive international infrastructure program involving nearly 140 countries with over an estimated $1 trillion in...

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China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), launched by President Xi Jinping in 2013, is a massive international infrastructure program involving nearly 140 countries with over an estimated $1 trillion in projects related to energy, transportation, digital networks, and trade.

Chinese leaders frame the BRI as “win-win” cooperation focused solely on development and connectivity. Beijing has gone to great lengths to minimize BRI’s links to the People’s Liberation Army and to downplay the initiative’s geostrategic overtones. Nevertheless, many governments have become worried about ulterior motives behind BRI projects, many of which have dual-use commercial-military capabilities and are increasingly connected to Chinese digital technologies and networks and satellite systems.

The Asia Society Policy Institute’s – Weaponizing the Belt and Road Initiative – examines key BRI projects in the Indo-Pacific and explores relevant Chinese doctrine, the involvement of the People’s Liberation Army with BRI, and assesses the potential military and geostrategic advantages to China from BRI ports and other projects.

This project is led by ASPI Vice President for International Security and Diplomacy Daniel Russel, with support from ASPI Senior Program Officer Blake Berger. The project and the report benefitted from advisement from experts and officials in Singapore, Australia, Japan, Vietnam, China, and the United States as well as to the expert advisory group whose distinguished members generously shared their time and wisdom to support this effort.

Key Findings:

  • A Multi-Purpose Platform: BRI’s belts, corridors, and roads provide Beijing with a versatile vehicle to support its foreign and economic policies and a brand that links multiple streams under one rubric. These include the Silk Road Economic Belt; the Maritime Silk Road; the Digital Silk Road; the BRI Space Information Corridor; and the Health Silk Road.
  • Benign, Win-Win Cooperation: Beijing consistently frames the BRI purely as a win-win economic and development endeavor as part of an effort to promote China’s image as a responsible and benevolent power.
  • Civil-Military Fusion: Chinese laws mandate that even overseas infrastructure be designed to meet military standards. These laws authorize the military to commandeer ships, facilities, and other assets of Chinese-owned companies. China’s push for civil-military integration builds-in dual-use commercial and military functionality in BRI infrastructure and associated technologies.
  • “First Civilian, Later Military”: Beijing’s approach seeks to lay the groundwork for military utilization without raising red flags. Many BRI ports are built along a “port-parks-city” development model that integrates the port with industrial parks and support industries like shipbuilding and resupply services that enhance the port’s capacity to support Chinese vessels, including navy ships. The presence of Chinese state-owned and private enterprises, often with operational control of port management, augment the potential military utility of the port.
  • Extraterrestrial BRI: Through the Digital Silk Road and the BRI Space Information Corridor, Beijing is providing access to its Beidou Satellite network, constructing digital networks, and providing surveillance, communications, “Smart Cities,” and other technologies. These Chinese technologies boost Beijing’s intelligence and surveillance capabilities, while also feeding the collection of “big data” that is useful to military planners.  
  • “Strategic Strongpoints”: China is not building overseas naval bases but instead is developing ports with dual-use functionality from the South China Sea into the Indian Ocean and on to the Middle East. These ports are “Strategic Strongpoints” in close proximity to maritime chokepoints and critical sea lanes. They are designed to support the Chinese military’s logistics network and improve its ability to operate further from home.  
  • Platforms for Leverage: These Chinese “Strategic Strongpoints” are integrated platforms for leveraging and projecting power in support of a wide range of strategic objectives. Strong political, trade, financial, and technological ties generate influence over host country governments. Beijing has used loans, aid, trade, disaster relief, military and high-level diplomacy, arm sales, and less respectable means to gain a strong foothold in the Indo-Pacific. 
  • Facilitating a Favorable Environment: The levers of influence that accrue from the BRI network enables Beijing to exercise persuasion, or coercion, in order to operate in a more compliant and advantageous environment. This dovetails with China’s systematic push to expand its influence in multilateral rule-setting institutions and some cases to create new ones. BRI’s many belts and roads seem to lead toward a regional (or even more extensive) ecosystem that structurally favors China’s interests. 
  • Disadvantaging Competitors: The BRI network allows China to bring goods to market faster and cheaper than competitors. Dual-use “Strategic Strongpoints” can impede U.S. power projection by complicating things like port access and overflight in the region. China’s provision of digital services creates dependencies and its collection of “big data” creates advantages. China’s trade ties, financial leverage, and expanding engagement are having an impact on the security environment by increasing the operational constraints on the U.S. military, particularly in a crisis when third-party countries may be averse to taking actions that China would oppose.
  • Sphere of Influence: The trend is toward an increasingly Chinese-dominated political, economic, technological, and strategic ecosystem in the Indo-Pacific. The challenge posed by BRI lies not in enhanced PLA capabilities per se, but in Beijing’s enhanced ability to project its sovereignty, rules, or undue influence based on a unilateral assertion of “core interests.” The exercise of this power challenges the rules-based international order. Should Beijing be successful in leveraging BRI as a hegemonic device, America’s ability to safeguard that order and maintain regional peace and stability would be compromised.
  • Not a Foregone Conclusion: While Beijing has made significant strides in strengthening its influence, the emergence of a Sino-centric regional ecosystem is by no means certain. China does not seem to offer a global vision that its neighbors are eager to embrace. And China’s own economic conditions, especially given the fallout of COVID-19, are far more fraught than in previous years. BRI projects rarely prove to be profitable, many have been scrapped or are stalled, and recipient countries are increasingly unable to meet payments on existing debt. Thus, Beijing can hardly be expected to continue to pump massive capital into the initiative, particularly in light of the voices within Chinese society calling for resources to be redirected to domestic priorities.
  • Opportunity to Compete: There is still abundant opportunity for the U.S. and likeminded states to compete — and to out-compete — China for influence and credibility in the Indo-Pacific. The problem presented by China’s “weaponization” of the BRI is not primarily a military one, and its solution can’t be primarily military either. The U.S. and likeminded partners should work together to provide a credible alternative to the BRI and to what Beijing is offering in other domains.
Weaponizing the Belt and Road Initiative

Daniel R. Russel is the Vice President of International Security and Diplomacy at Asia Society Policy Institute.

Blake H. Berger is the Senior Program Officer at the Asia Society Policy Institute.

To download the full report, please click here

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Bodog Poker|Welcome Bonus_and its competition with /atp-research/bri-investment-and-financing/ Wed, 06 Nov 2019 23:50:41 +0000 /?post_type=atp-research&p=18678 The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and China Development Bank launched a joint report on harmonizing investment and financing standards towards sustainable development along the Belt and Road. The purpose...

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The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and China Development Bank launched a joint report on harmonizing investment and financing standards towards sustainable development along the Belt and Road. The purpose of this report is to help drive sustainable development and the attainment of the SDGs through the creation and effective implementation of harmonized best-practice standards that can guide BRI investment and financing. 

This report reviews Belt and Road financing and investment trends since 2013 and ways of aligning investment and financing activities associated with the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) with sustainable development principles. The report identifies a “common core” of standards and regulations that major multilateral development banks, leading national development banks and Chinese institutions have established and employed to make finance and investment practices economically, socially, and environmentally sustainable. The report also provides a systematic framework for investment and financing standards along the Belt and Road, and puts forward eight main principles which are directly related to investment and financing activities. These include environmental protection, social development, programme harmonization, project full-cycle financial and debt sustainability, openness and transparency in procurement, risk management and control, objective project evaluation.

Based on the recommendations of this publication, UNDP and CDB plan to continue working with Chinese and international stakeholders to develop concrete policy guidelines and manuals for harmonized, SDG informed best practice investment and financing standards along the Belt and Road.

BRI

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Bodog Poker|Welcome Bonus_and its competition with /atp-research/u-s-china-essay-collection/ Fri, 18 Oct 2019 14:26:00 +0000 /?post_type=atp-research&p=18217 For many years, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies (SIIS) have had a broad and productive relationship exploring critical issues in...

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For many years, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies (SIIS) have had a broad and productive relationship exploring critical issues in the U.S.-China relationship and in global affairs. Since 2015, we have cohosted the U.S.-China Dialogue on the Global Economic Order, a track 1.5 dialogue that has sought to build mutual trust, enhance communication, identify issues, and propose solutions. The series of semiannual workshops, alternating between China and the United States, has covered a wide range of topics, including trade, investment, finance, and technology. The dialogue has drawn scholars, former policymakers, and current officials from the United States and China across a wide range of institutions and disciplines.

This volume consists of a series of parallel essays on the global economic order by U.S. and Chinese scholars who have participated in our dialogue. The value of this text is found not only in the ideas presented by the essayists but also in the opportunity to “listen” to each other as we manage our differences and seek a shared reform agenda for the global economic order. This report starts the journey.

Titles Include: 

1 | Sino-U.S. Joint Action for Stabilizing the World Economy: Common Interests and Shared Responsibilities
2 | More Responsible Stakeholders: A Challenge to Washington and Beijing 
3 | The Belt and Road bodog casino Initiative: How China and the United States Could Avoid Conflict and Promote Cooperation
4 | Infrastructure in Asia: Competition or Cooperation? 
5 | The Future of Global Reserve Currency
6 | Global Reserve Currencies: Currency Internationalization and the International Monetary System
7 | MDBs as Critical Bridges for U.S.-China Global Interactions 
8 | The United States, China, the Global Financial Safety Net and IMF Resources: Scope for Cooperation?
9 | China’s Leadership Is Central for the Success of WTO Reform 
10 | The United States and China Should Be Allies on WTO Reform 
11 | What the Huawei Case Can Teach Us about the U.S.-China Power Game 
12 | China and the United States: Digital Protectionism vs. Digital Free Trade 

These essays were drafted during the Spring of 2019 and reflect data that may have changed since that period.

This report is made possible by the generous support of Carnegie Corporation of New York.

CSIS_PerspectivesGlobalEconomicOrder2019

To read original collection, click here

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Bodog Poker|Welcome Bonus_and its competition with /atp-research/market-metrics-chinese-economic-challenge/ Thu, 10 Oct 2019 14:20:01 +0000 /?post_type=atp-research&p=17736 Chinese Stealth Reform? Despite the various U.S. sanctions related to Xinjiang, the explosive tensions involving the National Basketball Association and Hong Kong, and other possible flare-ups, the United States and...

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Chinese Stealth Reform?

Despite the various U.S. sanctions related to Xinjiang, the explosive tensions involving the National Basketball Association and Hong Kong, and other possible flare-ups, the United States and China are still resuming trade talks in Washington today. With all of these bilateral issues, an election cycle, and an impeachment prospect circling about, these talks may be the last chance during this presidential term to resolve economic tensions and avoid an “economic iron curtain” and decoupling. If U.S. officials are to make any progress in breaking the logjam, basic facts on the nature and trajectory China’s economic system will have to play a bigger role.

Team Trump’s mix of competent and impulsive escalatory moves on China have gained momentum, while most of this administration’s other adventures have been mired in partisan quicksand, because behind the mass of half-cocked allegations thrown at Beijing the past two years lies a starkly rational, and bipartisan, basis for concern. China regularly trumpets to the world that its commitment to liberalization is unflinching. As a September 2018 white paper issued by Beijing put it: “Reform and opening-up are China’s basic policies, and provide fundamental driving force for its development. China will not reverse course, but only deepen its reform. China will not close its door to the world, but only open wider.”

A raft of recent policy steps is offered as evidence: tariff reductions, new regulations governing intellectual property, and market openings in finance, autos, and pharmaceuticals. At the same time, Beijing has called out Washington for its widespread use of subsidies, buy American programs, and the managed trade campaign Trump is pushing. With Washington’s attacks on the World Trade Organization and other long-standing international institutions, Beijing even claims to be the defender of globalization in the face of U.S. mercantilism.

It is sad that there is such a large grain of truth in characterizations of U.S. nativism and affronts to multilateralism. But the more important driver of not just U.S. but global economic concerns, which drew such an audience for the pugnacious unilateralism of Trump in the first place, has been China’s flagging convergence with global market norms over the past decade. Western patience with developing China’s slow transformation was contingent on sufficient proof that it was not illusory. No advanced economy has as much confidence today compared to a few years ago that China is still on that path.

Market Metrics

Neither posturing from Washington or Beijing nor business position papers from the United States or Europe is sufficient to resolve economic discord. The path back to productive negotiations and a constructive future must be illuminated with an objective, quantitative reckoning of China’s economic policy trajectory, one that economists inside and outside China can agree on. The place to start is with a clear understanding of “reform,” which we define in its most traditional sense—as marketization domestically and liberalization internationally. This must include an economy built on market prices for basic inputs (land, labor, capital) and final goods and services alike, open entry and exit into markets for domestic and international participants, and fundamental protection of property rights. There is no room for a separate but equal mirror-economy of significant size where politics sets the prices, manipulates market participation, and commandeers property at will.

Viewed from these foundational principles, a dispassionate look at China’s economic core shows that behind piecemeal improvements reform is regressing.

The most important indicator is the outright U-turn that has occurred in the distribution of credit away from the Chinese private sector and toward state-owned enterprises (SOEs). Despite contributing less than a quarter of gross domestic product (GDP), SOEs now receive the great majority of bank loans. In the past five years, private companies have found more opportunities to list on China’s stock markets and issue bonds, but these components make up only a fraction of China’s total financial system. Moreover, whether they obtain financing via bank loans or corporate bonds, private companies end up paying higher interest rates than their state-owned cousins. In addition, almost all of the recent bond defaults have been for debt issued by private firms not well-protected SOEs. This pattern makes no economic sense given the fact that private firms earn a much higher return on assets that SOEs do. The flip side of the profit story is the stark difference in the debt picture, with SOEs accounting for the vast majority of the country’s corporate debt and having far higher debt-to-asset ratios than private firms.

A related measure is continually recurring over-investment in government-priority sectors. We see companies continuing to build in sectors way beyond what likely demand would suggest because of state signals of support. As a result, industrial capacity utilization rates go up and down in China like a roller coaster. This seesaw pattern originally was most visible in real estate and infrastructure-related sectors such as steel and glass, but it has spread into high-tech sectors from solar panels and wind turbines to electric vehicles and robotics. For example, China now has over 450 electric car producers who will in 2019 share a total market of at most 1.8 million passenger vehicles, or 4,000 vehicles per firm. That is not nearly enough sales to provide economies of scale for any producer.

Underwriting systemic misallocation of resources is ubiquitous state support. Official subsidies from the formal fiscal budget in China are enormous. As a proportion of the economy, explicit subsidies have fallen, but when other kinds of state largesse—free land, cheap natural resources, and below-market credit—are included, implicit support still accounts for almost 3 percent of GDP according to conservative sources, and possibly much more. For many sectors this translates into a massive proportion of total economic activity. Going back to electric vehicles, between 2009 and 2017, total government spending accounted for over 40 percent of all sales between 2007 and 2017. And despite China’s claim to be weaning manufacturers and consumers off subsidies, we estimate that in 2018 formal sectoral subsidies alone still totaled 123 billion yuan ($17.6 billion).

The story is much the same in the other sectors covered by the “Made in China 2025” plan, from commercial aircraft to semiconductors. Some would note the direct and indirect support Boeing and Airbus have at times received, but they are far more commercially successful than their Chinese counterpart, the Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (COMAC). As of early 2017, COMAC had pumped at least $8 billion into the C919; total spending by now is likely close to $10 billion, yet the aircraft is far behind schedule, still years away from entering commercial service, and is technically inferior to and less efficient than the Airbus’s A320 and Boeing’s 737. The C919 is the quintessential white elephant and emblematic of the reality that state preferences trump market logic in today’s China.

Not only do China’s distortions push too many firms and funds into priority sectors, racking up waste and debt, too few companies suffer from their poor choices. In a market-driven economy, producers that jump into saturated markets with essentially no demand go bust or merge with wiser firms. In China, manufacturers in sector after sector—from autos to solar to steel to robotics—are being extended financial life lines that they use to tread water, taking up market share their competitors depend on to prove their comparative advantage. Despite passing its first bankruptcy law in 1986, formal corporate insolvency in China is as rare as phoenix feathers and unicorn horns. In 2017, the United States had roughly 24,000 corporate bankruptcies while China, with much more breathless lending, had just 5,665. Even the tiny former socialist country of Romania had more, with 8,371.

The story on external liberalization is more mixed, in a positive direction, but despite official claims, China’s doors are not “opening wider and wider.” Tariffs have fallen but non-tariff barriers have taken their place and then some. Discrimination in the application of sanitary and phytosanitary standards, licensing, and government procurement is standard practice. The Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development reports that China still has one of the most restrictive environments for foreign direct investment of just about any country due to continuing obstacles to equity ownership, screening procedures for actual investments, and rules regarding key staff. Another sign of these obstacles is how difficult it is for foreign firms to acquire Chinese companies. According to our calculation, only about 5 percent of purely domestic merger deals go through special state reviews, whereas the figure jumps to around a quarter of all deals when foreign companies are involved. Not only does the Chinese state continue support beyond any reasonable limit, they often balk when foreign buyers want to come to the rescue. The “not for sale” sign on Chinese companies is a pillar in the edifice of a state-directed economic system.

Getting Real and Sitting Down

These metrics present a clear picture: China has modified its prior path toward marketization in ways that are not adequately acknowledged. The consequences for China’s development trajectory are also apparent as capital misallocation translates into a declining productivity contribution to economic growth. As the World Bank has shown, the long-term cost for China will be dramatic: a comprehensive reform package would result in China’s per capita income growing to nearly $50,000 by 2046; by continuing on its current path, incomes will be far lower, and that all assumes the country doesn’t suffer a financial crisis.

Just as China needs to face the facts or else face the music, the United States needs to fully reassess its approach toward both its bilateral negotiations and the global economy. Washington has the facts on its side, and it would benefit immeasurably from taking a principled approach in defense of markets not just in its demands from Beijing but in its own aspirations and behavior as well. A more principled posture would be more effective because it is so much more compatible with allied alignment. A recent CSIS report by Matthew P. Goodman and his team shows that the biggest weakness in the U.S. negotiation strategy has been neglect of friends and allies, all of whom share similar concerns about China’s trajectory and could be helpful in many ways.

Most important, marketization is the right horse for both China and the United States to bet on because it is the only thing that will work to secure China’s future growth. Neither doubling down on indigenous innovation, state-directed credit, artificial intelligence-enabled surveillance and control, and decoupling, nor the managed trade formulas Washington is employing, will bring about an economically successful China whose prosperity benefits the United States and the global economy. In that regard, a mutually beneficial outcome from the negotiations should be possible simply by the United States sticking to its principles and China following its core national interest and not making tactical changes simply to placate the demands of others.

Scott Kennedy is a senior adviser and Trustee Chair in Chinese Business and Economics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C. Daniel H. Rosen is a senior associate (non-resident) with the Trustee Chair in Chinese Business and Economics at CSIS and founding partner of the Rhodium Group.

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Bodog Poker|Welcome Bonus_and its competition with /atp-research/china-us-cooperation-competition/ Tue, 01 Oct 2019 17:01:03 +0000 /?post_type=atp-research&p=17522   Overview of China and the U.S.: Cooperation, Competition and/or Conflict This report is an experimental net assessment that addresses China’s emergence as a global superpower, and its competition with the...

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Overview of China and the U.S.: Cooperation, Competition and/or Conflict

This report is an experimental net assessment that addresses China’s emergence as a global superpower, and its competition with the United States. The report is entitled China and the U.S.: Cooperation, Competition and/or Conflict.

The report has been extensively bodog casino updated and expanded since its original publication. Besides incorporating various new reports on Chinese economic and military developments, the report also includes key quotes from the recently released Chinese White Paper commemorating the CCP’s 70 th anniversary. These quotes are now the best example of China’s indirect criticism of recent U.S. policy towards China, and strategy and actions towards other states, as well as its economic progress and plans to take lead on global development.

The entire report, and the report is available on the CSIS web site in several forms:

• Key sections are available on the CSIS web site in PDF form by clicking on each section title. The size of some of these PowerPoints may present problems for some IT systems, but quick comparisons of different Chinese and U.S. policy statements and assessments, and of the graphics and data that summarize the trends and issues involved are only possible if PowerPoint is used. The PDF versions are smaller but make it far more difficult to quickly compare a broad range of different trends.

• A PDF version of the full report is available on the CSIS web site (https://www.csis.org/analysis/china-and-united-states-cooperation-competition-andor-conflict) as well, which can be accessed here (https://csis-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/publication/191001_China_Grand_Strategy.pdf). This document allows the user to skim through comparisons of all the net assessment’s different sections, but the assessment’s length and the PDF format make it difficult to explore given issues in detail.

Selected Excerpts from the Report:

 PART TWO: China’s Emerging Economic Power provides official assessments of the important of economic developments and competition in Chinese strategy and U.S. assessments of the trends in Chinese forces, and the provides a wide range of graphics, maps, and data that show rate of Chinese growth. It assesses trends in trade and technology as well as total economies, and the potential causes of limits to China’s growth and emergence as an economic superpower. (https://csis-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/publication/191001_China_Grand_Strategy_Part%202_.pdf)

 

CSIS China P2 Econ Power

 

PART THREE: SHAPING ECONOMIC COMPETITION TO SERVE STRATEGIC INTERESTS notes reporting by the U.S. Office of the Secretary of Defense that stresses the leading impact of China’s economic growth on its competition with the U.S. It examines the importance of China road and belt initiatives, and its growing share of the global economy and trade. (https://csis-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/publication/191001_China_Grand_Strategy_Part%203_.pdf)

 

CSIS China P3 Cooperation

 

 PART SIX: PART SIX: CHINA, THE U.S., AND OTHER ASIAN POWERS — COMPETING CLAIMS IN ASIA AND THE PACIFIC focuses on the competing Chinese and other country claims in the Western Pacific and the Chinese build-up of forces in the South China Sea that is a key U.S. strategic concern. It analyzes the economic, trade, energy, and strategic influence impact of these issues as well as their military importance. (https://csis-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/publication/191001_China_Grand_Strategy_Part%206.pdf)

 

CSIS China P6 Other Countries

 

To access full report, click here

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Bodog Poker|Welcome Bonus_and its competition with /atp-research/chinas-bri-projects-africa/ Sun, 01 Sep 2019 17:42:05 +0000 /?post_type=atp-research&p=17481 Executive Summary In 2013, President Xi Jinping proposed that China would create a “Silk Road Economic Belt” across Central Asia and Europe and a “21st Century Maritime Silk Road” running...

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Executive Summary

In 2013, President Xi Jinping proposed that China would create a “Silk Road Economic Belt” across Central Asia and Europe and a “21st Century Maritime Silk Road” running through the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean, on to the Middle East and Europe — programs meant to revive ancient trade routes and reinforce existing ones. Beijing quickly wove these two visions together and dubbed them the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

 

While seemingly aimed at regional economic corridors, the BRI is in fact global and motivated by economic and strategic interests. A successful BRI would allow China to more efficiently utilize excess savings and construction capacity, expand trade, consolidate economic and diplomatic relations with participating countries, and diversify China’s import of energy and other resources through economic corridors that circumvent routes that are controlled by the U.S. and its allies.

The initiative is generally popular in the developing world, where almost all countries face infrastructure deficiencies and a shortage of resources to overcome them. Through large amounts of loans to participating countries to construct infrastructure in various sectors, the BRI can potentially bring significant benefits to these countries by filling their infrastructure gaps and boosting economic growth.

While popular with developing countries, the initiative has received various criticisms from advanced industrial economies: that the program lacks transparency and serves to facilitate China’s export of its authoritarian model; that the commercial loan terms are bringing on a new round of debt crises in the developing world; and that the projects have inadequate environmental and social safeguards.

This paper examines the implementation of BRI infrastructure projects in Africa in light of available information and concludes that African experiences with the BRI are quite heterogeneous. Some of the major borrowers have debt sustainability problems, while others have integrated the loans from China into sound overall macroeconomic programs. Some of the major borrowers are authoritarian countries with poor records of human rights, but other major participants are among the more democratic countries of Africa. It is hard to make simple generalizations about BRI in Africa. For this reason, it would be wise for Western countries to tone down their rhetoric on BRI, as many of the projects will probably work out well. It would help if Western countries provided more support to the International Monetary Fund to help countries manage their borrowing and to the World Bank to provide more infrastructure financing that increased options for the developing countries of Africa.

Brookings_china_bri_dollar

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Bodog Poker|Welcome Bonus_and its competition with /atp-research/twists-in-the-belt-and-road/ Sun, 01 Sep 2019 14:05:29 +0000 /?post_type=atp-research&p=17262 China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) remains a topic of great interest. But there is little knowledge about China’s internal voices. Dissent remains rare, yet there has been considerable pushback...

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China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) remains a topic of great interest. But there is little knowledge about China’s internal voices. Dissent remains rare, yet there has been considerable pushback on BRI policy and decision making. This is because there is an array of structural problems with the BRI’s design. BRI is entirely an economic program, run by various parts of the economic bureaucracy. But it does not give bureaucrats sufficient mandate to pursue their interests within China’s internal politics. So the BRI is attractive for central SOEs and dealmakers but unattractive to local leaders who are held accountable for whatever goes wrong in their respective areas. Although overt criticism is rare, failure to carry out orders is common. China’s leaders have responded to critiques of the BRI, radically changing its official focus and policy. It has moved from a geoeconomic export policy to part of China’s toolkit in the current US trade war. But there is no indication that the structural problems will be addressed, thus limiting the BRI’s ability to achieve its goals, and as such, pushback will continue.

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) began with Xi Jinping’s remarks during visits to Indonesia and Kazakhstan in late 2013. It covers a range of activities, almost all related to foreign investment and infrastructure, It was formerly called “One Belt, One Road,” then the “Belt and Road,” and now the “Belt and Road Initiative” (although all along in Chinese the name has remained the same: 一带一路).

The “Belt and Road” contains has two geographic elements: a Maritime Silk “Road” linking China’s east coast to Australia, Latin America, Europe, and Africa via the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean, and a “Belt” linking western and northwestern China to Central Asia, Russia, Iran, Turkey, and again Europe. These have now formed six official “corridors”—five extending westward and one extending southward, while China’s maritime authority has claimed three “blue economic passages” by sea.  The BRI has also spawned a cottage industry of reports and books.

BRI rhetoric is grandiose, yet vague. Pitched as a Chinese version of the Marshall Plan, in theory it covers 55 percent of the world’s gross national product, 70 percent of the global population, and 75 percent of known energy reserves. A recent National Bureau of Asian Research study by Rolland notes that “most common estimates for the current proposed total budget for BRI are $1 trillion and $1.3 trillion.”[1] Adjusted for current values of money, this is about 50 times the size of the original Marshall Plan.[2]

But the size of the Belt and Road is constantly changing to suit the context in which it is presented. Xi Jinping said in January 2017 that “Chinese companies have made over US$50 billion in investment.”[3] He also promised an additional US$79.5bn at the May 2017 Belt and Road Forum.[4] Officially, then, the Belt and Road is a program of over US$100bn, similar to the competing Japanese initiative, which was capitalized at US$110bn, and about double the size of US measures. Yet Chinese domestic officials often seek to promote the Belt and Road as a program of far greater size and grandeur, and they reach for the largest number they can justify.[5] For example, the State Assets Supervision and Administration Commission has argued that during “the 5 years of promotion and implementation of the Belt and Road Initiative, state-owned enterprises have undertaken a total of 3,116 projects in 185 countries along the route, and have signed external contracts for construction projects worth over 500 billion USD, with their total overseas assets exceeding 1 trillion USD.”[6] In fact, however, there were only 53 countries that had actually signed on to the BRI in that period.

The divergence among estimates and general fears of China’s direction under Xi Jinping unsurprisingly have led to considerable concern about Chinese intentions. Many of such fears focus on the Belt and Road as some form of geopolitical plot. To quote just one of many recent reports, this one by prominent young American scholars: “Under the umbrella of the Belt and Road, Beijing seeks to promote a more connected world brought together by a web of Chinese-funded physical and digital infrastructure,” reports the Center for New American Security, and so “the Belt and Road is more than just an economic initiative; it is a central tool for advancing China’s geopolitical ambitions.”[7]

Internal critiques of the Belt and Road

Curiously, for Chinese observers, the Belt and Road is hardly a geopolitical plot. See, for example, the writings by Wang Xiaoquan,[8] secretary-general of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Belt and Road Research Center,[9] probably the most official Belt and Road think tank.

Wang is clear that the  Belt and Road is “an economic initiative,” but he believes that “countries in Eurasia generally expect China to take on more roles and functions in politics and security.” Although “any countries are economically reliant on China … their security relies on US and Russia” and this diarchy is “used as leverage to influence China’s foreign policy and economic cooperation.” So Wang presents three problems with the Belt and Road: it does not have uniform standards or rules for trade and investment in Eurasia; there is a deep-rooted distrust of attempts for strategic cooperation as “many countries are suspicious of China’s intentions”; and finally, the Belt and Road does not address the security concerns posed by the so-called three threats of extremism, terrorism, and separatism.[10]

Wang’s frustrations can be best understood as complaints by a Chinese foreign policy and security specialist (Wang works on Central Asia) about a policy that is insufficiently foreign-oriented. This is because the BRI is an economic program with some foreign-policy implications. It is not under the purview of China’s foreign affairs apparatus or any leaders responsible for foreign affairs. The Belt and Road is a function, not a driver, of China’s foreign policy; and China’s internal political incentives for the Belt and Road have long been misaligned. This misalignment is what drives much of the pushback on the BRI.

This conclusion can be reached by looking at how the Belt and Road is organized internally. The decision makers that are assigned to a body indicate much about the purpose of that body. The Belt and Road is under the economics policy area (rather than being under the control of China’s leader, Xi Jinping),  and it remains under the control of the chief economic official, who lacks a remit to conduct foreign policy The office drafting the Belt and Road documents is contained within the central economic development ministry (NDRC).[11] Directives to officials describe the Belt and Road as an “economic strategy.”[12] Even though the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is a joint signatory on official statements regarding the bodog poker review policy, it is outranked by the NDRC as a co-signatory (as it is a Commission).

Where one sits is where one stands. Even today, the head of the coordinating body in charge of the Belt and Road is not Xi Jinping, the head of China’s military and foreign-policy apparatus, but rather Han Zheng, the second-in-charge of China’s government. The head of foreign affairs is one of four vice-chairmen overseeing the BRI, rather than the head of the foreign affairs policy area— and he is outranked by the economic advisors.[13]

Han Zheng’s four subordinates are, in order, Xi’s top foreign policy advisor, the third-highest government official, the head of China’s public services, and the head of China’s economic super-regulator.[14] There are also representatives from the banking, economic, foreign policy, and overseas development sectors – but not from the military. Figure 1 below describes these institutions.

Picture1.png

Figure 1: Central agencies involved in the Belt and Road

 

Regardless of what happens, for Chinese bureaucrats, the Belt and Road will always appear to be weaker than other areas within the Chinese system as Xi Jinping is not the head of the Leading Small Group (LSG) in charge of the area. At last count, Xi was the head of more than one dozen different areas, the “chairman of everything” as Geremie Barmé dubs him.[15] That he is not head of the Belt and Road reveals to subordinates that this project area is less important than others. Moreover, and it is worth re-emphasizing, as there are no military representatives listed as attending BRI-related meetings, the only way that the military could influence the BRI would be by Xi becoming head of the LSG.

Another way of ascertaining the importance of the BRI is to look at the documents that have been released to govern implementation of BRI policies. Xi Jinping has mentioned the Belt and Road at a number of Politburo study sessions[16] and in important speeches.[17] He also chaired a fifth anniversary symposium of the BRI and gave keynote addresses at two major Belt and Road Forum (“BARF”) events. Discussions of the Belt and Road have also been included in meetings of the Central Committee, China’s highest body, and it was mentioned at the Fifth Plenum of the Eighteenth Party Congress and at the Nineteenth Party Congress.

What is missing, however, is authoritative collective guidance on the Belt and Road Initiative. Xi announced the BRI in two speeches in September and October 2013. Also in October 2013, it was mentioned as a key economic component to improve China’s diplomacy with its neighbors[18] and one month later, in November 2013, it was written into the overall national economic strategy.[19] Thereafter, many government ministries and provincial governments prepared responses. One year later, several economic meetings were held at which Xi specified his goals for the Belt and Road and announced the US$50bn Silk Road Fund.[20] Banks were told to prepare to lend to BRI projects. In 2015, a work group  prepared a (non-binding) Action Plan,[21] while local governments prepared their own, sometimes binding, plans (see below). Finally, the government released a coordinated policy statement in March 2015, even though it can be overridden by more than 20 other decrees.[22] Throughout 2015 and 2016, various government departments, local governments, and even courts[23] added “Belt and Road” sections to their policy documents and plans.[24]

Yet it was only at the end of 2017 that a binding central decree on the Belt and Road was issued. At the Nineteenth Party Congress, the Belt and Road strategy was added to the party charter and the initiative was enshrined in the Chinese Communist Party constitution,[25] and its corollary, “the community with a shared future for humanity,” was included in an amendment to the People’s Republic of China constitution in March 2018.[26]

 

Figure 2 below shows the order and timing of the official releases of Belt and Road information, arranged by rank of the issuing body

Picture1.png

Figure 2: Official Belt and Road documentation released by the central bodies, 2013–2017[27]

 

As Figure 2 makes clear, the Belt and Road developed mainly through an array of government ministry plans and projects, attempting to flesh out the vague intentions from the top. Note the lack of official party documentation to govern the BRI. As a comparison, let us examine the development of another signature policy, the anticorruption campaign. In Figure 3 the commitment of Xi Jinping and the party to the anticorruption campaign is clear. The many party documents provide a complete regulatory plan (note the red squares).

pic3.png

Figure 3: Official anticorruption documentation released by central bodies, 2013–2017

 

The Belt and Road is not a top-down masterplan with specific orders emanating from above. Rather, various government ministries and departments rushed to access whatever capital became available.  It is an unclear destination from which central ministries seek to access more funds.  

Into this void may leap the ministries, banks, and SOEs that are designated responsible for the BRI; any project can become a Belt and Road investment. The many actors involved, and their control over the staggering amounts of capital and resources (including strategic directions by central state-owned enterprises and banks, some of which are the largest of their type in the world) mean that notionally there are vast sums of money at the central level available for Belt and Road investments. However, investments to Belt and Road countries[28] fell in both 2016 and 2017.[29]

The gap between the funds available for investment and the amount of actual trade and investment is due to China’s internal political economy. The Belt and Road is more attractive to SOEs than it is to private enterprises, as the former receive more credit to undertake Belt and Road projects.[30] This is partly by design: in his 2015 BRI speeches Xi Jinping increased state bank lending to the BRI. Yet this funding does not come from BRI banks; rather it comes from the policy banks[31]—at the end of 2016 92 percent of BRI deals were backed by either the China Development, the Exim Bank, or one of the big four state banks, and only 8 percent were backed by the Silk Road Fund or the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.[32]  (almost all has come from the Silk Road Fund, which has funded syndicate projects in Russia, Pakistan and Dubai[33] and has struck a deal with the US firm General Electric).[34]

Andrew Batson calls this “the SOE infrastructure complex,”[35] that is, a group of banks, deal advisors, and SOEs that seek to boost the flow of deals rather than to fulfil a geopolitical strategy. The Belt and Road has thus become a vehicle to fund projects rather than a way to advance a secret Chinese grand strategy.

This structure determines the internal critiques of the BRI. Indecision and inaction are more likely than criticism. China is struggling to develop its capacity to analyze the many countries regularly added to the Belt and Road. But SOE managers and even government officials have little on-the-ground experience, let alone the ability to judge  the viability of complex multiyear infrastructure deals.[36] Critics have noted the failure of similar Japanese plans in the 1990s that faced similar capacity issues.[37]

Hence internal critics of the Belt and Road tend to be critics of the inefficient industrial policy.[38] This criticism cuts across normal silos: even China’s more nationalistic newspapers note that BRI deals must make financial sense for foreign governments,[39]  while economists writing for the domestic audience argue that the Belt and Road “is a good international economic strategy, but for now it is certainly not an easy one.”[40]

The BRI is almost always presented as a “highly centralized and coordinated” initiative. In reality, it has a highly centralized and coordinated marketing campaign attached to the less- coordinated activities of China’s state-owned enterprises and of asset managers who seek better returns or more access to state largesse by going overseas. Moreover, the campaign breaks down once it encounters local organs. This leads to the second source of domestic criticism: the inability of Belt and Road mandates to force local governments to venture overseas. 

Local governments are the break in the Belt and Road

Any changes to China’s ability to “export excess capacity” refers almost exclusively to local governments. Among the thirty-one provinces to the 800 prefectures to the 3,000 counties to the 80,000 townships, each jurisdiction must have a Standing Committee led by a party secretary and a head of government (governor). Almost all state-owned enterprises, and even private enterprises, are dependent on their local party leader, not anyone in Beijing. Central promises of funding and mandates of action mean nothing if there is no support from a local high-ranking official. Most fiscal spending in China—roughly 80 percent—occurs at the local-government level, the county or below (half of these monies come from the central government and half are raised locally). Everyone reports to the leaders of the Standing Committee of each jurisdiction (see Figure 3 below). This means that even though there are Belt and Road regulatory bodies at the local level, as indicated in Figure 1, they hold very little regulatory power. They must still take their claims to the local Standing Committee, chaired by the party secretary and governor, who ultimately must sign off on any deals, and they know that they will be held accountable for any Belt and Road failings.  

pic4.png

Figure 4: The hierarchy of the Belt and Road political organization passed down

 

Local leaders are graded on performance based on in some cases thousands of local indicators. e.g., there are about 2,000 indicators for county-level leaders. Therefore, it is impossible to monitor all the indicators all of the time. As a result, the local leaders to whom the Belt and Road actors report have both considerable responsibility and power: they can be held accountable for whatever occurs in their respective jurisdiction, but they also have a lot of latitude to execute policy and focus on specific indicators as they see fit. This creates an incentive to focus on targets that are high priority politically, often to the detriment of other less important ones.

The game becomes one of measuring, or at least assessing, what is the most high-priority target. Enforcement offices are headed by a member of the National Development Reform Commission (NDRC) at the provincial level, but the NDRC does not have  the power for a final signoff. (Note that there may be exceptions, e.g., the party secretary of Zhejiang is also the chair of the BRI small group).[41]

There is no central order strong enough to encourage any risk-conscious local leader to sign off on a Belt and Road investment. Until the 2017 Belt and Road constitutional addition (point 12 in Figure 2 above), the Belt and Road was not a party-supported policy. Even now, there are significant funding problems. The center has Belt and Road money, but principal-agent problems exist: the center knows that it is difficult to enforce loans to local governments. Thus, the local governments must come up with some matching funds and the local leader will be held personally responsible should the deal fail. Few leaders will sign up for such an unfunded mandate unless they believe that it will help with their promotion prospects. Hence, as Chinese newspapers have recently reported, local governments concentrate on using BRI to meet other measurable indicators, such as the number of rail freight trips to Europe, as that let them subsidise freight costs for local goods and thus meet many other economic indicators.[42]

This is not so much internal dissent as a simple misalignment of policy that results in things not happening. The Chinese political model of infrastructure spending relies on the center to approve a vague, amorphous goal with a large pot of money. Local governments and the SOEs and banks they control access as many funds as possible from either the center or a local bank, hoping that the debt will not collapse before the local leader is forced to move on. The BRI has attempted to export this model overseas, even though it is always much easier to build a road or a bridge locally than abroad. This is also not solely a capacity issue, although it does make a difference, as Lu Gang of East China Normal University notes – the centre’s desire to constantly add more countries to BRI does not help.[43] (Jie Yu, for example, estimates that there are only twenty specialists in China with the ability to carry out specific due diligence for Central Asian investments.)[44] Perhaps unsurprisingly, China’s neighboring ASEAN countries have been best able to deal with local governments, based on China’s own assessments, official editorials,[45] and also academic empirical research.[46]

Finding dissent or pushback regarding this structural problem is unlikely, as no provincial party secretary will go to the press to complain. Instead, inaction is far more likely, or, better yet, constant streams of stories and press releases about commitments to the Belt and Road but without having to sign off on a deal. This explains the frustrations of senior think tank intellectuals such as Wang Xiaoquan who wish a greater security orientation: local governments are not measured by their impact on international events.

Indeed, by 2016 the greatest critic of the Belt and Rod internal-goes-external model was perhaps Xi Jinping himself. Xi had originally outlined that the Belt and Road would enable China to restructure its economy, one of three strategies to move economic growth across different regions.[47]  But Xi’s 2016 Belt and Road speech Bodog Poker noted that this was unlikely; rather, the Belt and Road required more coordination and better local-overseas and government-business integration as well as promotion of the “concrete achievements” of the BRI. [48]

China’s official response

Beginning in 2017, China decided to alter the entire direction of the Belt and Road. Part of this was in response to the internal structural problems whereby there were insufficient incentives to force bureaucrats to act, as outlined above. Therefore, the Belt and Road was made a “national strategy” and at the Nineteenth Party Congress it was included in the official party charter. This makes it a nationally binding program with the force of a jueding (决定), the highest officially declared policy. This allowed central bureaucrats to add Belt and Road indicators to the many local measurement criteria.

In his party congress speech Xi instructed the party to strengthen its leadership and oversight of the program, particularly in terms of risk assessment and mitigation. At the 2017 Belt and Road Forum he promised that China would pay more attention to “the needs and sensitivities of local governments and populations” and undertake more small-scale projects.

But this was only a minor repositioning compared with what occurred at the second Belt and Road Forum in 2019. In response to foreign criticism that the Belt and Road was a “debt trap,” Xi responded that the Belt and Road would provide fewer subsidies for Chinese firms; would be less corrupt based on a “clean Belt and Road” initiative; and would be more environmentally conscious based on “green investment principles.” China’s chief banker said that he wanted more “market-based” lending, less lending to Chinese SOEs, and more assessments of the recipient nations’ debt loading.[49] An official “debt sustainability framework” for the Belt and Road was published. (Perhaps along these lines, Japanese scholars noted an increase in the number of times the term “high-quality” (高质量) was mentioned in discussions of the Belt and Road, peaking at the time of the Belt and Road Forum).[50] Such comments regarding debt-trap diplomacy are fairly boilerplate and can be regarded as standard fare for an international conference.

What is far more revealing is the internal line on the Belt and Road published in a People’s Daily series, titled as a set of “official instructions.”[51] These instructions represent a significant deviation. Whereas Chinese officials were told that the Belt and Road would succeed because China remains a lucrative export market throughout the world,[52] the BRI was now a strategy to expand Chinese imports. Such imports were to render China’s market more competitive and to build a “high-quality market economy”[53] as well as to improve the lives of for Chinese citizens.[54]

This is, of course, a complete turnaround. Until then, the Belt and Road was always presented as China going out to the world. Now, the Belt and Road exists because foreigners will be attracted to market access in China.  This can only be seen as a response to the trade war. Indeed, the official instructions also make clear what the price of more access to the Chinese market will be:

We do not deliberately pursue a trade surplus and we are committed to promoting balanced trade development. We welcome high-quality products from all over the world and we are willing to import more.  … We call on the developed countries to abandon outdated export restrictions on high-tech products. … We hope that all countries will treat Chinese products fairly, treat Chinese investors fairly, treat Chinese students and scholars fairly, and create a healthy environment for normal economic and trade cooperation and people-to-people exchanges.[55]

Similarly, recent editorials on the US-China trade war have argued that the Belt and Road will succeed because China, as opposed to the US, upholds and plays by the rules of the WTO.[56] The Belt and Road is now following the existing rules of “economic globalization.”[57] Subsequent editorials focused on China as a supporter of the global economic architecture rather than as a supporter of development.[58]

In other words, the Belt and Road is now a part of the trade war discussions, and its existence reveals that China, unlike the US, will play by the rules of economic globalization.

The shift to describing the Belt and Road as being import-led highlights the dilemma for local leaders. Leaders respond to incentives, but central incentives to pursue the Belt and Road goals are insufficient. It is much safer to proffer Belt and Road rhetoric than to sign off on an investment and to have to do due diligence for a country like Djibouti that one may be hard-pressed to find on a map, let alone hope to improve one’s prospects. In particular, Xi has called on Chinese companies operating overseas to act as “BRI ambassadors,” making sure that their behavior and practices reflect well on projects that are “worthy of praise”[59] and that officials work to draft new rules for “Belt and Road” projects that  do not reflect badly on the central government.[60] This situation will be exacerbated by allowing more imports into one’s jurisdiction.

So what comes next? Following this volte-face, standards will almost certainly become the next battleground. Even during the 2015 boom days of the Belt and Road, Xinhua noted that the adoption of high-technology standards would be sufficient to justify losses on deals.[61] Oil and gas executives have argued that “Controlling standards is more important than anything else,”[62] a line also promoted by telecommunications commentators.[63] Xi may have wanted the BRI to attract imports, but in fact China is attracting engineering and science training programs. Thirty-two countries have already joined,[64] and thousands of scientists have been trained in China, free of charge, and will return to their home countries taking with them Chinese standards and practices. China is trying to expand this exercise to a Digital Silk Road with the goal of “bridging the digital divide.”[65] The government plan for the BRI seeks to formulate international standards for thirteen industrial sectors.[66]

What next?

If the previously export-driven Belt and Road is now presented to  encourage foreign imports and focuses mainly on exporting Chinese standards, then the current divide between local governments (that have few incentives to go abroad) and the central SOE–infrastructural complex will become worse.

With regard to overseas criticism, in many ways the structural problems make the Belt and Road more attractive to foreigners. Nevertheless, the Belt and Road lacks expertise and know-how. Foreign countries will continue to play Chinese actors off against one another (and against Japan and the US, both of which have established Belt and Road rivals). but the ability to sweeten the pot with access to China’s markets makes the Belt and Road more attractive to foreign companies. Finally, there is the advantage that China seems to be willing to write off many debts: Rhodium Group’s analysis of China’s so-called “debt-trap” diplomacy found that borrowers were able to get China to write off or renegotiate their loans. Although outsiders will continue to criticize the Belt and Road, they will also continue to line up Belt and Road deals. This will intensify the battle to set global standards, particularly in technology.  

Internal critics will continue to be rare, if only because criticizing a national policy may be euphemistically termed the ultimate career-limiting move. But informal pressures are nearly certain to grow. There are only so many bad decisions that China can afford—a billion here and a billion there and pretty soon there will be some real debts, not to mention some unhappy citizens who will wonder why their school was not constructed but a foreign railway was built. This will be exacerbated by the twists and turns in what the Belt and Road is: from a geo-economic export policy confused by many as a security program to an ostensible trade war weapon. Expect more bumps ahead.

To read original report, click here

1] https://www.nbr.org/publication/a-guide-to-the-belt-and-road-initiative/

[2] The Marshall Plan is estimated at US$50bn

[3] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/01/full-text-of-xi-jinping-keynote-at-the-world-economic-forum

[4] Even this is vague; see Xi’s speech at the first Belt and Road Forum: “China will scale up financing support for the Belt and Road Initiative by contributing an additional RMB100bn to the Silk Road Fund, and we will encourage financial institutions to conduct overseas RMB fund businesses with an estimated RMB300bn. The China Development Bank and the Export-Import Bank of China will set up special lending schemes worth RMB250bn and RMB130bn respectively to support Belt and Road cooperation on infrastructure, industrial capacity, and financing. We will also work with the AIIB, the BRICS New Development Bank, the World Bank, and other multilateral development institutions to support Belt and Road–related projects. We will work with other concerned parties to jointly formulate guidelines for financing Belt and Road–related development projects.”

[5] Involving what in Australian bureaucratic parlance is known as the “whistle test”: 

[6] Lu Gang, Central Asian Studies, East China Normal University.

[7] Daniel Kliman, ​Rush Doshi, Kristine Lee, and Zack Cooper, “Grading China’s Belt and Road,” Center for a New American Security, April 8, 2019, https://www.cnas.org/publications/reports/beltandroad

[8] Wang Xiaoquan, “Ouya quanmian huoban guanxi dailai de lishixing jiyu yu tiaozhan” (Historic Opportunities and Challenges Generated by the Eurasian Comprehensive Partnership), Eluosi xuekan (Russia Journal), no. 20 (2017). 

[9] I thank Jae-Yeob Kim and the Eurasia project at the German-Southeast Asian Center of Excellence for Public Policy and Good Governance (“CPG”), based at Thammasat University, for bringing this to my attention. I also thank Mr Kim for outstanding research assistance.

[10]然而,由于域内情况极为复杂,“一带一路”建设不会一帆风顺。目前主要遭遇三大瓶颈性问题:一是域内没有形成统一开放的贸易和投资规则与标准体系,贸易和投资便利化程度不高,而“一带一路”项目暂时缺少改变规则的能力,只能被动适应各国经济规则,造成很多项目特别是多边项目实施困难;二是域内国家国情复杂,文化差异巨大,彼此战略互信不足,有些国家对华疑虑较大,很多经济和社会收益很好的项目可能因此搁浅,或因政党轮替、政权更迭而陷入困境;三是域内安全形势不容乐观,“三股势力”呈蔓延趋势,国家内部和国家间矛盾易被外部势力利用,存在发生“颜色革命”、国家间冲突乃至战争的危险性,从而给“一带一路”项目带来巨大风险。

[11] In March 2015 it came under the purview of the State Council in order to supervise all BRI-related activities: the Leading Small Group on Advancing the Construction of the Belt and Road and its subsidiary, the Office of the Leading Small Group on Advancing the Construction of the Belt and Road.

[12] 经济战略

[13] The Small Leading Group for OBOR (One Belt, One Road) is based in the State Council and chaired by Zhang Gaoli, standing committee member of the Politburo. Four deputy chairs share responsibilities equally: Wang Huining, head of Policy Planning for the CCP and chief advisor to Xi; Wang Yang, deputy premier in charge of economic and trade issues; Yang Jiechi, state councillor for foreign affairs; Yang Jing, secretary general for the State Council.

Following the Thirteenth National People’s Congress in March 2018, Vice Premier and Politburo Standing Committee member Han Zheng became chairman of the LSG, while State councillor and former minister of foreign affairs Yang Jiechi, vice premier Hu Chunhua, secretary general of the State Council Xiao Jie, and NDRC director He Lifeng assumed responsibilities as vice chairmen.

[14] 杨洁篪、胡春华、肖捷、何立峰. See: 韩正主持召开 推进“一带一路”建设工作领导小组会议. 中华人民共和国中央人民政府网.2018-05-25

[15] Javier Hernandez,  “China’s ‘Chairman of Everything’: Behind Xi Jinping’s Many Titles,” October 25, 2017, New York Times, 

[16] For example,  lists Politburo sessions on December 5, 2014, April 29, 2016, and September 27, 2016; there were also editorials that hinted at the BRI being discussed as part of the Asian civilizations Politburo study session in June 2019, but the official read out does not list it by name.

[17] See the book on Xi’s Belt and Road remarks: 

[18]“加快基础设施互联互通,建设好丝绸之路经济带、21世纪海上丝绸之路,构建区域经济一体化新格局.”see:习近平在周边外交工作座谈会上发表重要讲话,: 

[19] The Thirteenth Five-Year Plan, abbreviated version: 

[20]丝绸之路经济带和21世纪海上丝绸之路建设战略规划

[21] State Council (2015) “Vision and Actions on Jointly Building Silk Road Economic Belt and 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road, March 2015, available online: 

[22] http://www.gov.cn/xinwen/2015-03/28/content_2839723.htm

[23] 最高人民法院《最高人民法院关于人民法院为“一带一路”建设提供司法服务和保障的若干意见》16 June 2015, available online: 

[24] “Action Plan on Belt and Road Standard Connectivity (2015–17),” October 2015; “Education Action Plan for the Belt and Road Initiative,” July 2016; “Action Plan on the Belt and Road Cultural Development (2016–20),” December 2016; “Vision bodog casino and Action on Jointly Promoting Agricultural Cooperation on the Belt and Road,” May 2017; “Vision and Actions on Energy Cooperation in Jointly Building a Silk Road Economic Belt and a 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road,” May 2017; “The Belt and Road Ecological and Environmental Cooperation Plan,” May 2017; “Vision for Maritime Cooperation under the Belt and Road Initiative,” June 2017; “Belt and Road Sports Tourism Development Action Plan,” July 2017; “Special Plan on Advancing Cooperation of Science and Technology Innovation in the Belt and Road Construction,” November 2017; “Action Plan on Belt and Road Standard Connectivity (2018–20),” January 2018.

[25] http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2017-10/24/c_136702025.htm

[26] http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2018-03/11/c_137032165.htm

[27] Xi speech on the OBOR, September 10, 2013; Included in the Five-Year Plan, November 2013; Ministerial/provincial response 2014; Economic meetings: Xi specifies OBOR goals; Silk Road fund November 12, 2014;

OBOR LSG announced, meets, February 2015; OBOR Action Plan + Local Government Plans, February 2015; OBOR opinion released in March 2015; Actors include OBOR sections in plans/policies, 2015/16; OBOR renamed the Belt and Road, 2016; Planned “Mid-term” Review, 2017.

[28] That is, countries that have an MOU with China on the Belt and Road; note that the obligations of such an MOU are often more aspirational than onerous.

[29] On trade, this is as a relative proportion of year-on-year trade. On investment, this is a proportion of the cumulative non-financial direct investment in the BRI. For trade and investment, see Alicia Garcia-Herrero and Jianwei Xu, “Recent Developments in Trade, Investment and Finance of China’s Belt and Road,” HKUST IEMS Working Paper No. 2018-50, January 2018, p. 8. 

[30] SOEs are much more enthusiastic about the initiative—60 percent of surveyed SOE managers stated that their firms had plans to participate, compared to only 35 percent of non-SOE managers. Li Xiaojun and Zeng Ka, “To Join or Not to Join? How Chinese Firms View the Belt and Road Initiative.” Pacific Affairs, vol. 92, no. 1 (2019), 5–26. 

[31] Interviews also reveal that 2014–16 was reportedly the peak period of central lending, with the infrastructure ministries particularly keen to spend money.

[32] Data from the Financial Times, 2017; see James Kynge (2017) Finance will create new alliances across Asia, Financial Times, June 16.

[33]目前,丝路基金约70%的合同投资资金用于大型国际合作项目,如电站开发、基础设施建设、港口航运和高端制造业。在丝绸之路基金、其他国际投资者和贷款辛迪加的共同支持下,俄罗斯亚马尔液化天然气项目、巴基斯坦卡洛水电站、阿联酋迪拜光热电站和哈斯延清洁燃煤电站得到了推进。

[34]我们还与美国通用电气公司合作,建立联合投资平台,共同探索“一带一路”沿线国家和地区在电力、油气、新能源等行业的投资机会,推动项目投资创造更大价值。

[35] https://andrewbatson.com/2019/05/02/the-belt-and-road-is-about-domestic-interest-groups-not-development/

[36] Jie Yu, “The Belt and Road Initiative,” LSE Research Online. 

“Apart from the need for many engineers, evaluating the viability of OBOR projects requires geopolitical strategists who understand the respective regions; financial experts who understand the host countries’ fiscal and monetary policies, and project management teams that have special knowledge of the local labor market.

However, there are currently fewer than twenty Central Asia and Middle East specialists in China who are closely following the geopolitical situation in the two regions. Most of these experts have no direct access to key government officials, influential academics, or business leaders in Central Asia and the Middle East. Much of their research is based on arbitrary collections of evidence rather than systematic analyses of the target countries. Most of the senior management teams in the large Chinese SOEs that may be involved with OBOR-related projects are appointed by the party and are equipped with industrial expertise, but not the necessary management skills or general market knowledge of the host countries. For example, they are usually unfamiliar with the market environments of the host countries and they have little understanding of local labor union politics. As a result, SOEs may hire leading global professional services firms to develop potential OBOR projects. Some Chinese companies believe that outsourcing professional services firms is equivalent to possessing their own sound project-management skills and therefore there is a readiness to pursue OBOR projects.”

[37] https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/1999544/why-chinas-one-belt-one-road-plan-doomed-fail

[38] https://www.ecfr.eu/page/-/China_analysis_belt_road.pdf

[39] http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/980059.shtml

[40] Huang Yiping, 一带一路战略下的对外投资新格局,读懂一带一路,国家智库顶级学者前瞻中国新丝路 (Beijing: CITIC Press, 2015).

[41]“省推进’一带一路’建设工作领导小组会议召开,” April 12, 2018, 

[42]{等深线} 中欧班列挤“泡沫”, available online:  . Thanks to PandaPaw DragonClaw for originally locating and translating this article: 

[43] Lu Gang, Central Asian Studies, East China Normal University: Belt and Road as suffering from ‘mission creep’ as it has rapidly increased from 60 countries to more than 100.

[44] Jie Yu, “The Belt and Road Initiative,” LSE Research Online. 

[45]“共建一带一路,构建亚洲命运共同体(国际论坛),”《 人民日报 》, May 2, 2019, p. 3.

[46] For example, Garcia-Herrero and Xu, “Recent Developments in Trade, Investment and Finance of China’s Belt and Road.”

[47] See Chai Yifei, “三大战略肩负共同使命’ 20 September 2016, http://paper.people.com.cn/rmrbhwb/html/2016-09/20/content_1713601.htm

[48]习近平在推进“一带一路”建设工作座谈会上发表重要讲话 张高丽主持

“三是要切实推进统筹协调,坚持陆海统筹,坚持内外统筹,加强政企统筹,鼓励国内企业到沿线国家投资经营,也欢迎沿线国家企业到我国投资兴业…

七是要切实推进舆论宣传,积极宣传“一带一路”建设的实实在在成果,加强“一带一路”建设学术研究、理论支撑、话语体系建设。”

[49] “Central Bank Chief Says China Will Guard Against Belt and Road Debt Risks,” Caixin Global, April 25, 2019, 

[50] A count, for example, of the number of times  it is mentioned in the People’s Daily shows a significant spike around the time of the most recent Belt and Road Forum: from never reaching anywhere near ten mentionsin any given month beginning at the time of the launch of the BRI, there were suddenly sixty mentions in April. Asei Ito, “China’s Quest for a “High-quality Belt and Road Initiative,” July 18, 2019, http://www2.jiia.or.jp/en_commentary/201907/18-1.html.

[51] This is how internal comments are distributed. The highlighted points in a speech aree covered in all media outlets and released in both English and Chinese. The internal signals for bureaucrats are released in the People’s Daily, as this sets the line for China’s vast propaganda bureaucracy to follow. The internal Chinese version of the People’s Daily, that is, the one that is followed by officials, is used for all quotes in this paper.

[52]中国市场 世界机遇, 三论学习领会习近平主席在第二届“一带一路”国际合作高峰论坛开幕式上关于扩大对外开放的重要讲话精神, 《 人民日报 》, April 29, 2019.

[53]加快高水平市场经济体系建设

[54]进口产品可以增加消费者的选择和福利,满足人们日益增长和多样化的生活需求,对建设高质量的生活具有重要意义。

[55]我们不会刻意追求贸易顺差,而是致力于促进贸易平衡发展。我们欢迎来自世界各地的优质产品,并愿意进口更多具有国外竞争力的优质农产品、成品和服务,使我们的市场成为国内外优质产品的定期博览会。我们呼吁发达国家放弃对高科技产品过时的出口限制。一些国家想要减少赤字,限制出口,这恰恰相反。要知道,高科技产品越多,精神损耗越快。只有及时推出先进、优质、有竞争力的产品,才能在更高水平上实现贸易平衡和互利共赢。开放不是单行道,开放应该是双向的。中国企业希望平等进入彼此的市场。我们希望各国公平对待中国产品,公平对待中国投资者,公平对待中国学生和学者,为两国正常的经贸合作和人文交流创造良好的环境条件。只有这样,我们才能建立一个共同繁荣的利益、责任和命运共同体。

[56]中国不实行以邻为壑的汇率贬值,也不将汇率用于竞争目的。

[57] 国纪平, 任何挑战都挡不住中国前进的步伐, 《 人民日报 》( 2019年05月13日   01 版): ‘作为二战后国际经济秩序和多边贸易体系的主要建设者和参与者,美国应该承担起应有的责任,带头遵守多边贸易规则,通过世贸组织框架下的争端解决机制妥善处理与其他成员的贸易摩擦.’

[58]为全球经济治理贡献正能量, 《 人民日报 》( 2019年04月30日   02 版)

[59] See https://www.nbr.org/publication/a-guide-to-the-belt-and-road-initiative/

[60] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/apr/25/belt-and-road-forum-chinas-project-of-the-century-hits-tough-times

[61]高铁出海获历史性突破 中国印尼合建雅加达至万隆高铁, Xinhua News Agency, October 17, 2015, also: 人民日报:中国与印尼签署合建雅万高铁协议将成为印尼乃至东南亚地区的首条高铁. Press release: 

[62] “陆如泉,一带一路:油路上的中国,”Caixin, July 6, 2015. 

[63] “移动通信标准翻身,” Caijing, September 7, 2015, 59.

[64] 李晓红, 一带一路行稳致远 工程科技大有作为《 人民日报 》, May 6, 2019, p. 11.

[65]推进数字丝绸之路建设。我们将继续发挥中国在信息基础设施和设备制造方面的优势,提高国际通信互联互通水平,提高网络质量、安全性和可靠性,提高沿线国家互联网的可用性和可负担性。推进大数据、云计算、人工智能应用和智慧城市建设,推进沿线欠发达国家5G和下一代互联网的开发建设,缩小数字鸿沟。

[66] “Action Plan for Harmonization of Standards Along the Belt and Road (2018–2020),  www.sac.gov.cn/zt/ydy/bzhyw/201801/t20180119_341413.htm

 

 
The China Leadership Monitor is sponsored by the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace at Stanford University.

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