A Risk Benefit Analysis Of Chinas Belt And Road Initiative Spatial Information Corridor

At the turn of the century, competition in space shifted from being between the United States and the Soviet Union to being between the United States and China. Since its first manned mission in 2003, China’s space program has accelerated dramatically. China completed the BeiDou System satellite constellation in 2020, its own Global Navigation Satellite System, sent a rover to the far side of the Moon in 2019 and to Mars in 2021, and is assembling its own space station with completion targeted in 2022. While the United States is still dominant in space, China’s rapid development concerns the U.S. military. Due to the military-civil dual-use nature of space activities, as China’s space capability develops it can also be viewed as development of its military capability in space, thereby complicating the geopolitical competition between the United States and China. The question that emerges is: How will China’s space capabilities enhance its global influence? More specifically, will BDS shift the current power distribution between the two countries toward China in the South China Sea, a crucial hot spot over which the two powers compete? In this study I try to answer such questions by focusing on the Belt and Road Initiative Spatial Information Corridor, which includes China’s most obvious geopolitical space-related activities and provides space-related services to members of the Belt and Road Initiative. BRI–SIC projects are the least studied of all BRI projects. By conducting a risk-benefit assessment of 108 BRI–SIC projects, I explore a more specific question: Should the United States and its allies be concerned with China’s global expansion of spacerelated activities in the name of BRI–SIC? This question is answered affirmatively based on this study’s assessment. Concerns among the United States and its allies ought not stem from the BRI–SIC being designed to benefit China’s global military strategy due to the military-civil dual-use nature inherent to space-related activities and technologies. Rather, concerns are due to the economic and political influence that BRI–SIC can provide to China. BRI–SIC projects benefit their host nations. Specifically, 100% of the identifiable projects are beneficial infrastructure enablers, and 76.6% can strengthen the human security of the host. While some projects carry potentially high national security risks, developing countries acting as host nations are undeterred, as the priority is to develop the economy. China is able to convert the beneficial nature of the BRI–SIC into leverage over the recipient host nations to enable China to establish its own ecosystem in the space-related data/information domain. Currently, the United States and its allies need not be concerned that the BRI–SIC enhances China’s military or spacefaring capabilities. Rather, they need to be aware that the BRI–SIC is sowing seeds for Chinese space-related vendors, particularly for those dealing with the BeiDou System, to permeate BRI markets in the future. Because BRI host nations possess huge market potential due to faster rates of economic development and greater vulnerability to climate change, China is positioned to harvest the fruits of this endeavor unless the United States and its allies provide attractive alternatives to host countries."--Abstract.

China proposed the Belt and Road Initiative in 2013 to improve connectivity and cooperation on a transcontinental scale. This study, by a team of World Bank Group economists led by Michele Ruta, analyzes the economics of the initiative. It assesses the connectivity gaps between economies along the initiative’s corridors, examines the costs and economic effects of the infrastructure improvements proposed under the initiative, and identifies complementary policy reforms and institutions that will support welfare maximization and mitigation of risks for participating economies.

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), officially unveiled in 2013, is Chinese President Xi Jinping’s signature foreign and economic policy initiative to achieve improved connectivity, regional cooperation, and economic development on a trans-continental scale. This book reviews the evolving BRI vision and offers a benefit-risk assessment of the BRI’s economic and geopolitical implications from the perspective of Asian stakeholder countries, using both qualitative and quantitative research methods. Among the value added of the book is first an online perception survey of opinion leaders from Asian participating countries on various aspects of the initiative. To our best knowledge, the survey is the first of its kind. Second, the book presents the simulation results of a computable general equilibrium model of the world economy to estimate the potential macroeconomic impacts of the BRI as a whole and those of its constituent overland and maritime economic corridors. Third, the book makes ten key evidence-based policy recommendations on how to enhance the prospect of a successful and mutually beneficial BRI 2.0 to both China and stakeholder countries.

Officially announced by Xi Jinping in 2013, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has since become the centrepiece of China’s economic diplomacy. It is a commitment to ease bottlenecks to Eurasian trade by improving and building networks of connectivity across Central and Western Asia, where the BRI aims to act as a bond for the projects of regional cooperation and integration already in progress in Southern Asia. But it also reaches out to the Middle East as well as East and North Africa, a truly strategic area where the Belt joins the Road. Europe, the end-point of the New Silk Roads, both by land and by sea, is the ultimate geographic destination and political partner in the BRI. This report provides an in-depth analysis of the BRI, its logic, rationale and implications for international economic and political relations.

One of Chinese president Xi Jinping's signature foreign policy programs is the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a web of infrastructure development plans designed to increase Eurasian economic integration. Chinese official rhetoric on the BRI focuses on its economic promise and progress, often in altruistic terms: all countries have been invited to board this "express train" to wealth and prosperity. Missing from the rhetoric is much discussion of the initiative's security dimensions and implications. Chinese officials avoid describing the strategic benefits they think the BRI could produce, while also gliding over major security risks and concerns. Yet at the unofficial level, China's security community has paid close attention to these issues, probing in great depth the gains Beijing can expect, the challenges it will face, and the new demands it will have to satisfy. Understanding those Chinese assessments is helpful as the United States considers how, when, and in what capacity to engage the BRI.

China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), China’s globe-girdling infrastructure and trade corridor project, is a rare watershed in international affairs. It affects, whether directly or indirectly, nearly the entire world, directly involving more than 60 countries, nearly 4.5 billion people (about two-thirds of the world’s population), up to $8 trillion, and around 40 per cent of the global economy. BRI also entails a rising power—perhaps the next superpower—endeavouring to build one of the biggest and most expensive super-projects the world has ever seen. If it achieves its potential, BRI could even pose a threat to the Bretton Woods global economic model that has prevailed since the end of World War II. BRI has the potential to change the world in a big way. And yet, the project also confronts security and financial challenges that are as serious as its potential is soaring. In this way, BRI is a topic that needs serious examination. This book features chapters on BRI prepared by top international scholars who have been tracking the project closely. The chapters assess the project’s impact across Asia, highlight its opportunities and challenges, and consider what might be in store in the future. The chapters in this book were first published as a special issue of the Asian Affairs.

The IISS Strategic Dossier China’s Belt and Road Initiative provides a geopolitical and geo-economic assessment of President Xi Jinping’s flagship foreign-policy initiative. The dossier explores the Belt and Road Initiative’s role in China’s domestic industrial strategy and in the country’s growing influence around the world. It studies how Beijing’s ambitions, management and financing of the initiative have evolved since its launch in 2013. In addition, the volume reflects on the future of China’s initiative following the COVID-19 pandemic. The dossier is organised around a region by region assessment of what Beijing has sought to achieve in different countries and how the Belt and Road Initiative has played out over time. The volume examines recipient countries’ responses to the Belt and Road Initiative and how these have affected it. It also looks at responses from other global and regional powers to China’s economic activities around the world and offers thoughts on ways the West might better contend with Beijing’s geo-economic influence.

China portrays the Belt and Road Initiative - an interconnected network of rail lines, oil and gas pipelines, roads, bridges, and port facilities designed to connect China with Central Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Europe - as an effort aimed at regional economic integration with win-win outcomes for every country involved. The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is the flagship project of the Belt and Road Initiative, consisting of rail lines, fiber optic cables, power plants, and the Gwadar Port facility. CPEC provides the most tangible infrastructure projects to evaluate. Critics argue that it is a Chinese neocolonial effort to exert Chinese influence and increase Chinese power globally, burdening poor and developing countries with dangerous amounts of debt. Chinese internal and external security concerns, such as violence in Xinjiang and the perceived "Malacca Dilemma," are also discussed as important drivers for the Belt and Road Initiative and CPEC. This thesis examines both economic and security arguments to address the question: What is the primary driver for China's Belt and Road Initiative and the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor? The research shows that security is the primary driver for these projects. Economic considerations and benefits are also important to Chinese leaders, but security considerations trump economic ones.What drives China's Belt and Road Initiative? Is it economic, driven by China's desire and need to continue economic growth? Or is the BRI driven by China's need to maintain a firm grip on the southwestern provinces and perceived external security threats? Examining where China invests for these projects gives insights to the motivations. If the BRI and CPEC were purely economically driven as China claims, then Beijing would be investing in countries with investable grade credit ratings and where they would likely receive a safe return on investment. However, China is investing in countries with high risks of default on loans and who have credit ratings below investable grade, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), notably Pakistan, Venezuela, and Argentina. These high risk investments can threaten the viability of CPEC and BRI projects in the near and long term, as well as threaten to overburden the Chinese and recipient country's economy with non-performing loans and debt. This analysis of where China is investing points to a different driver, that of security concerns.The thrust of BRI out of China is focused on the southwest frontiers, an area which China has historically felt a shaky grip on power and an area China views as its "soft underbelly." Xinjiang, as well as Pakistan are of concern to Beijing as unrest and a shift in Uighur sentiment from secular to Islamist in Xinjiang is linked to Pakistan. An unstable Pakistan poses an increasing risk to China, not only because they share a border, but China perceives that Uighurs have and are traveling to Pakistan for radicalization and then return to Xinjiang and perpetuate acts of violence. Xi Jinping said that religious extremism is a direct threat to China, as extremists and separatists could flow into Xinjiang with a goal to weaken China. This focus on internal security was also included in Xi Jinping's 19th Party Congress speech. Internal security spending by China totaled nearly U.S.$200 billion in 2017, and while the largest amount of domestic security spending is focused on the Tibetan Autonomous Region, Xinjiang is second and saw a 92.8 percent increase between 2017 and 2018.I. INTRODUCTION * II. THE CHINA-PAKISTAN ECONOMIC CORRIDOR * III. AN ANALYSIS OF SECURITY AS THE DRIVER * IV. ECONOMICS AS THE DRIVER FOR CHINA'S BELT AND ROAD INITIATIVE * V. CONCLUSION

This collection explores the expansion of Chinese outbound investments, aimed to sustain the increased need for natural resources, and how they have amplified the magnitude of a possible international crisis that the People’s Republic of China may face in the near future by bringing together the views of a wide range of scholars. President Xi’s Belt and Road initiative (BRI), aimed to promote economic development and exchanges with China for over 60 countries, necessitates a wide range of security procedures. While the threats to Chinese enterprises and Chinese workers based on foreign soil are poised to increase, there is an urgent need to develop new guidelines for risk assessment, special insurance and crisis management. While the Chinese State Owned Enterprises are expanding their international reach capabilities, they still do not have the capacity to assure adequate security. In such a climate, this collection will be of profound value to policy makers, those working in the financial sector, and academics.

Infrastructure is essential for development. This report presents a snapshot of the current condition of developing Asia's infrastructure---defined here as transport, power, telecommunications, and water supply and sanitation. It examines how much the region has been investing in infrastructure and what will likely be needed through 2030. Finally, it analyzes the financial and institutional challenges that will shape future infrastructure investment and development.