The Pivot of Asia: Conceptualizing the Peaceful Rise
The Belt and Road Initiative is a trans-continental multibillion-dollar infrastructural network linking China to what Bernard Cohen called the ‘Eurasian Continent Realm’ and the ‘Atlantic-Pacific Maritime Realm’. This economic expansion is diametrically opposed to the US hegemonic expansion. China with its economic and military development claims a peaceful rise which is non-aggressive and multilateral in its nature. Its policy of peaceful rise and development conveys to the international and the regional community, the willingness to endorse other state’s sovereignty, peace, and stability.
The BRI is considered as the ‘Project of the Century’ encompassing around 70 states, stretching around 3 continents, and affecting 60% of the world population. It is a global development agenda on the part of China to address the infrastructural gap, capacity gap, and technological gap. It is aimed at re-routing the inter-continental trade through China as a pivot. This economic saturation of China is being materialized by two of its mega-projects as indicated in figure. 1.
Overland SilkRoute Economic Belt (SREB): Consisting of six corridors for the trade of goods and services in and out of China.
Maritime Silk Route (MSR): Consisting of a chain of seaports also known as the string of pearls to the guard shipping routes.
These two projects of the BRI indicate the scope and size of its socio-economic implications for the region and the security-based ramifications for the international community.
The BRI Development Agenda: From Globalism to Regionalism
The process of globalism has been effective for the developed world however, the benefits of development and modernization have not trickled down equally in the peripheral regions of the world. That is why the world is witnessing the rise of new regionalism based on a multidimensional approach to deal with the global transformations which negatively affect the political economy of the developing and underdeveloped states. And this system is very aptly backed by China. With a history of the tributary system, China can integrate the regional states is a system of loose diplomatic relations based on shared benefits, mutual trade agreements, and interconnectivity.
The old tributary system of China is in a state of revival through the BRI. The cardinal principles of these two asynchronous simultaneous developments are indicated in figure.2
This system of new regionalism holds China as its central state through a spherical worldview rather than a vertical view purported by the US. The prospects of this system for the socio-economic prosperity of the eastern hemisphere are imminent. It is the reincarnation of the Flying Geese Model of development utilized in the development and modernization of the East Asian economies. According to this mode, wages increase vis-à -vis economic development causing industries to lose their comparative advantage. And China appears to be mitigating this through ‘going out’ for cheap labor. This new system shall reshape the following spheres which were previously dominated by the entrenched center-periphery discrepancies of West imposed structural imperialism.
| Domain of Influence | Prospects of BRI-led Regionalism |
| Social | The BRI led regionalism can increase the societal viability through redistribution of wealth and sharing of technology The investment pattern can show a shift from security funding to a development-based expenditure It will revamp the employment opportunities in the region and the net incomes will rise to threefold to fourfold Would lead to cross-cultural understanding in solving collective action problems within the regionThe infrastructural development will reinvigorate the interest of the regional community on the issues of environment and sustainability |
| Economic | Conflict prevention through comparative advantage-based development A move away from dependency culture systematically induced and maintained by the international financial regions of the World Bank and International Monetary FirmWould enhance the collective bargaining leverage of the developing and the underdeveloped statesWould ease and emancipate the terms of trade which have mostly been disadvantageous to the marginalized statesEconomic development strategies and projects will become stable, consistent, and acceptable due to regional continuities |
| Security | The regional security regimes can be consolidated Collective anti-terrorism and counterterrorism strategies can be devised and implemented Regional monitoring bodies can provide effective security input to the already exiting international organizations like the FATF, UN, etc. |
The shift from the globalism to regionalism offered by China is both comprehensive in its nature and appealing to the states of the Eurasian region and even extending to other regions including Africa. However, a study by Brantley Womack uses a rational choice rather than a cognitive psychological approach to understand the Chinese nuanced tributary system in form of the BRI. To him, not the Confucian morality that dictates the Chinese foreign policy of win-win approach and peaceful rise but the security dilemma which leads to a relative accommodation of the underdeveloped states to avoid the coming of the new anarchy.
Reshaping the Regional Value Chains: The SRM Mechanism and Spatial Fixes
The entire functioning of the BRI which targets the socio-economic advancement of the Eastern hemisphere is based on Surplus Recycling Mechanism (SRM) and Spatial Fix Mechanism. The underlying logic of the BRI and its investment initiatives is indicated in these two processes. These are targeted for three major purposes of growing industrial output, increasing labor employment, and accumulating financial capital. Though highly effective, both the BRI mechanisms for infrastructural development indicate intricate fault lines which can roll-back the major socio-economic gains of the mega-project by raising international skepticism. They indicate a move towards the geopolitics of the infrastructural development with little regard to the regional states. This criticism has been echoing in the US and the regional skepticism is also on the rise. So, the adverse socio-economic ramifications of the BRI based on the fault-lines of these two mechanisms are given below and there is a need that China becomes more transparent about the strategic connotations underlying its benign investment initiatives.
Some of the adverse impacts these mechanisms of the BRI could have on the socio-economic aspects of the region of the Eastern hemisphere are stated below:
Economic Ramifications
- It will wage a new war of capital accumulation between the Eastern hemisphere led by China and the Western hemisphere led by the US. This dichotomous rise will affect the marginalized states of the region drastically as also indicated by the US-China trade war where the financial market came on the verge of collapse.
- The peripheral states of the region might not wholly benefit from the development as it might appear as a way of China’s debt-trap diplomacy and the states might turn assertive in refuting China’s role in the region.
- The flattening of the region based on capital accumulation needs bringing down barriers which can lead to a contagion effect even the Chinese economy falters.
- The policy gaps in the inter-regional network can only work through a highly transparent, robust, and monitored system, which lacks inmost states of the region.
Social Ramifications:
- The regional contagion can also spread pandemic conditions as observed during the coronavirus crisis.
- Unlike the South East Asian region, there is no cultural emulation in other parts of the Eastern hemisphere and China’s cultural assertiveness might raise national and cultural opposition to China’s enhancing role in the region.
- The eastern hemisphere might just end up being a captive market if the productive capacities are not utilized in the peripheral region. This will end up in neo-colonialism the global inequality will take nuanced shape but shall persist.
- The intermingling of the workings with weak governance structures can lead to gender-disparity, sexual-based violence which can only end with the grassroot level reforms are set as a precondition for development.
These impacts of BRI can drastically revamp the social mobility of the citizens, increase interconnectivity and raise inter-cultural tolerance however, the downside of it can have major blowbacks to the projects as a whole and to the region it covers. Thus, it is high time that China addresses such issues on mutual understanding and cooperation to mitigate the negative socio-economic ramifications.
Regional and Extra-regional Dynamics:
All the infrastructural development projects for decades are accompanied by geostrategic and geopolitical motives. Such developments in a highly politicized world are determined by geopolitical constraints. The BRI is no different, it offers avenues for advancement, but it goes in hand with China’s geopolitical and geostrategic goals of ensuring capital development and security in a volatile political environment. Hence, the mega project of BRI is under intense scrutiny from both the states within the BRI and those outside of it.
Intra-regional discrepancies
The BRI project takes around 82% of the total gain and a big chunk of which goes to the high-income states of the region including China and East Asian states. This trend might increase inter-regional discrepancies with uneven globalization with some benefiting more and others remaining mostly stagnant. These unequal benefits will lead to negative spillovers feeding inter-regional skepticism.
Extra-regional refutations
The impact of the BRI led flattening of the region holds negative consequences if the links with the non-BRI states are not properly maintained. The internal trade of the region shall show consumer cost reduction, lowered trade barriers, and trade facilitation. However, the non-BRI region will face increased trade diversion which might become the reason they rebut the BRI led development.
Conclusion
The BRI project is a new mode of regionalism with a different means to the geopolitical ends. It identifies the flattening process to be a derivative of the geopolitics of globalization and capitalism. Though the socio-economic impacts of the project of the century are vast and all-encompassing yet the risks like debt sustainability and governance can adversely lead the project in another dimension if not addressed through a system of communication, coordination, and transparency. Though the menaces of capitalism cannot be completely mitigated due to its structurally enmeshed nature. But the BRI shows the alternative mode of its practice based on authoritarian capitalism of China. The world awaits what benefits it will reap. How equitable will the ‘equitable globalization’ be and how peaceful will the ‘peaceful rise’ be?
