There are already some regional economic cooperation programs and initiatives designed to tackle the aforementioned issues, such as the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), the U.S.-sponsored New Silk Road Initiative, the EU’s New Central Asia Strategy,46 the EU-Asia Connectivity Strategy,47 the Turkic Council, the Gulf Cooperation Council, and the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation. However, it is difficult to truly solve the various regional challenges and problems by relying on one or even several existing solutions. The BRI is not a competitor or substitute for already existing regional cooperation programs. It is based on the reality that the development and stability of these countries and regions are highly important to China. Therefore, as long as the BRI promotes regional economic cooperation and maintains regional stability, the initiative will find common ground and expand cooperation with them, and achieve equal cooperation and mutual benefit.
In fact, as a developing country, China has unique experience in the process of participating in and integrating into the global governance system, and has carried out a series of attempts to improve the global governance system conceptually and practically. For example, the ideas and policies that bring harmony, security, and prosperity to neighbors proposed and pursued by China have compensated to some extent for the development and stability gap left by the global governance system in different regions, and these policies have achieved good results in the past several decades.48 The BRI is merely the latest iteration of such concepts and policies.
Challenges and Responses
The BRI cannot be accomplished overnight, and there are lots of difficulties and challenges to overcome. In this regard, many people around the world think that China is too optimistic about the BRI. However, China has a relatively straightforward outlook toward the BRI. China has adopted a fairly pragmatic attitude while the international community has doubted and criticized the BRI. As China has explained the BRI to foreign countries, it has also actively adjusted and improved its BRI practices.
Doubts and Criticisms
The frequent doubts and criticisms the BRI has faced include: the BRI is China’s external-facing geopolitical strategy while China subverts the existing international order; the BRI is China’s effort to build a sphere of influence—countries who participate will be trapped by Chinese investment and forced to supply Beijing with commodities and raw materials before becoming dumping grounds for Chinese products; China will transfer its industrial overcapacity to foreign countries; China is exporting its economic development model through the BRI, which will lead to overdevelopment, environmental pollution, debt traps, and more.
The most popular of these may be regarding the BRI as China’s new geopolitical strategy. This view generally sees that China has seized the opportunity when Russia, the United States, and Europe left a geopolitical vacuum in Central Asia. Proponents of this view think the BRI is a way to not only ensure energy supply security but also help China improve cooperation with its western neighbors and counterbalance the U.S. pivot to Asia.
In fact, this false dilemma, based on the hypothesis that China and the United States are locked in a zero-sum game, has inherent contradictions. First, Russia, the United States, and Europe have significant interests in Central Asia and are still pursuing their own strategies, so there is no vacuum. Secondly, although the U.S. strategy of rebalancing has brought new challenges to China, Beijing cannot give up its strategic interests in East Asia. Thirdly, TPP, TTIP, and the 2018 trade agreement between the United States, Canada, and Mexico are completely different from the BRI. China will naturally take corresponding measures to deal with the economic impacts of those agreements because it has many economic ties to the countries involved, but the BRI has no substantive relationship with those deals. Therefore, China’s participation in improving the global governance system is not to correct or subvert the existing international order, as some analyses have envisioned.
The achievements of China’s forty-year opening and reform policy are based on the country’s integration into the existing international system. China hopes the system will become better, more reasonable, and less chaotic, but it does not intend to scrap it and start all over again. Ignoring this point and overemphasizing the negative interpretation of the changes brought about by the BRI, and introducing policies to hedge against the BRI, or forming an international alliance to disrupt or contain the BRI, would reflect the injustices and imperfections of the existing international order and global governance system.
Interpretation and Response
The Chinese government believes that these doubts and criticisms are usually caused by misunderstandings and distortions.50 Some governments and scholars misunderstand the BRI because of insufficient information. Some negative distortions come from prejudice against Beijing and serve to help contain China, and when combined with misinterpretations of China’s goals, they link the BRI with rhetoric about China as threatening, thereby spreading a negative image of the BRI. In addition, the gap between what’s been proposed and how it’s implemented will cause further misunderstanding. Of course, some BRI projects are not perfect, and many of its plans and working mechanisms need to be strengthened. The China-Europe Railway Express, for example, has improved connectivity between Chinese provinces and EU countries, but the service is expensive and needs to be better organized. Chinese scholars have raised a lot of criticisms and suggestions in order to correct those polices and activities. However, if scholars exaggerate the negative aspects of the BRI purposely, it would obviously undermine international public opinion, which is necessary to foster deep discussions and studies of the BRI.
In recent years, China has made many efforts to increase the BRI’s transparency and to ensure the project’s openness and reciprocity in order to strengthen mutual trust among the participants. On the one hand, China encourages officials, media commentators, and scholars to explain its policy through interpreting, studying, and communicating, thereby making sure domestic and international communities comprehensively understand the BRI. On the other hand, China is
