Strengthening ties crucial to realizing benefits of ‘One Belt, One Road’ initiative
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Chinese VIEWS
A SERIES of planned investments by domestic financial institutions have drawn our attention to China’s bid to revive the ancient Silk Road.
For starters, a consortium of banks and trust funds from the CITIC Group, a major state-owned financial conglomerate, will reportedly invest more than 700 billion yuan (US$113 billion) into projects related to China’s much-vaunted “One Belt, One Road” initiative.
Touted as a cornerstone of central government policy, this multi-pronged initiative — with the “belt” and the “road” serving as shorthand for the “Silk Road Economic Belt” and “the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road” respectively — aims to boost connectivity, trade, capital flows and economic integration between China, South East Asia, Eurasia and Europe.
“What’s unique about this initiative is not just its geographic impact or its huge economic promise,” Khaled Fathy Aly Youssef, consul general of Egypt, said recently in Shanghai.
Speaking at a forum held by Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Youssef claimed that “what really distinguishes the ‘One Belt, One Road’ initiative is the extent to which it will unite the global markets.”
This strategy, he added, is now gaining greater attention thanks to the key concept behind it: mutual growth and the prioritization of market cooperation.
Mutual growth
Mutual growth is indeed at the heart of the initiative if it is to succeed, said Ozcan Sahin, consul general of Turkey in Shanghai, who described it as a truly “continental” project — one which encompasses 65 countries, 4.4 billion people and represents US$21 trillion of global GDP. Sahin pointed out that both China and the countries involved in the “One Belt, One Road” initiative stand to profit enormously from the strategy.
For China, better economic linkages with the rest of the region will mean increased competitiveness for Chinese companies, especially those specializing in infrastructure construction, as they expect to find an outlet for their excess capacity outside of China amid a domestic economic slowdown, said Sahin.
Financially, the potential financial benefits of the initiative are enormous.
The yuan-swap deals which “One Road, One Belt” projects are expected to usher in will in all likelihood elevate the Chinese currency’s global profile.
Benefits are also myriad for countries within the scope of the “One Belt, One Road” initiative, as they stand to both gain more favorable terms when it comes to building badly-needed infrastructure and also obtain easier access to the Chinese market. Meanwhile, an increase in payments and trade settlements in the yuan will lead to less dependence on the US dollar, said Sahin.
Of course, achieving this initiative requires the united efforts of participating countries, who will need to address thorny issues related to inter-regional differences, a natural product of the disparities and conditions which exist within the countries that surround China.
Sister cities
Stefano Beltrame, consul general of Italy in Shanghai, suggested that given China’s size, “we Europeans used to think dealing with China is very complicated.”
Since good-will projects often take time to wind their way through foreign policy procedures — often causing undesirable delays or snags along the way — Beltrame believes that public diplomacy can thrive where official diplomacy cannot deliver. Instead of relying on government-to-government relations only — say, between Beijing and Rome — perhaps scaling down communications to the local level could prove useful, Beltrame said.
Sahin concurred, and pointed to the multitude of sister city relationships Shanghai has established over the years, which he sees as instrumental in leveraging overseas good-will toward China and its people.
He noted, however, that “the sister city relationship is a good catchphrase, but you need to put in certain schemes and projects to make that meaningful.”
The Pakistani port city of Karachi, for example, is now celebrating the 31st anniversary of its sister city relationship with Shanghai. Apart from a number of student exchange programs and the establishment of academic research centers in each other’s top universities, public diplomacy between China and Pakistan needs to advance and diversify, Farhat Ayesha, acting consul general of Pakistan in Shanghai, told the forum.
In her opinion, such forms might include more air-time for specific TV programs of the “One Road, One Belt” countries, because they can “go softly into the minds of the Chinese people and create a better understanding of their social values and norms,” Ayesha noted.
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