U.S. Institute of Peace experts discuss the latest foreign policy issues from around the world in On Peace, a brief weekly collaboration with SiriusXM's POTUS Channel 124.

Transcript

Laura Coates: Joining us now is Carla Freeman, a senior expert for the China program at the United States Institute of Peace. She specializes in China's foreign policy, China, and nontraditional security issues, as well as US-China relations. She joins us now. Carla, welcome and good morning. How are you?

Carla Freeman: I'm well, good morning to you and thank you for having me.

Laura Coates: I'm glad that you're here. Thank you so much. There's been a lot happening, particularly with that 10-year anniversary of China's Belt and Road Initiative. It was celebrated just last week in Beijing, more than 120 countries, representatives were attending, including one Vladimir Putin. Just give us some background on how this Belt and Road Initiative has evolved over the last decade.

Carla Freeman: Yeah, as you say, was a big gathering in Beijing and it's the third such gathering. The initiative itself was launched in 2013 by Xi Jinping as a signature initiative and it has changed a lot. When he rolled it out, it was vague, and no one knew what would come with it. It's still quite vague. It turns out, it's a kind of branding exercise for China, but it has yielded a lot of projects all over the world, infrastructure projects principally, that allow China to export its infrastructure capabilities. If I go back to 2013, when Xi Jinping rolled it out, the BRI was in many ways a response to the fact that China had overcapacity in infrastructure, partly as a result of the global financial crisis when China had poured a lot of its stimulus into building out China's own infrastructure and it needed somewhere to take that. China also was really worried at the time about the pivot to Asia that the Obama administration had had launched. And so, looking out to other countries and reaching out through a major program like this, especially one that included land-based infrastructure, train, systems and bridges and new roads, was a way for China to reach from instead of going out to its to the oceans to its eastern coast to well reach westward toward Europe, even a major trading partner. And so, it was a very ambitious project, one that has now given China a diplomatic footprint all over the world, and as you say, over 120 countries, maybe 130 countries in Beijing and really been quite a success for China, particularly in among developing countries.

Laura Coates: So, when this I mean, the United States, what is the position in terms of what the impact can be for the US?

Carla Freeman: Yeah, it's raised a lot of questions. I mean, from the United States perspective, this isn't just an economic initiative, this also has geostrategic repercussions. The Belt and Road Initiative originally was the One Belt, One Road, and the One Belt refers to all of these land-based infrastructure systems that China has proposed developing through partnerships with countries all over the world. And the road, oddly, is actually a Maritime Silk Road, as it's also called, with a lot of ports around the world. And so, from the US perspective, this One Belt One Road had geostrategic implications because it marked a major expansion of China's influence and also a physical presence in countries around the world. And in working with some countries that that the United States has been concerned about. Not its we're not just talking about Russia, but other countries around the world where, where the US has concerns because of their own security activities, and also countries where China where the United States has historically exercised greater influence. So, you know, the fact that that suddenly, China's building a port, or helping to finance the port of Piraeus in Greece, that was concerning to the United States. And we can look at other examples around the world.

Laura Coates: Clearly, this has is here to stay. I mean, it seems to be now enshrined in China's CCP constitution and considered a linchpin in Xi's foreign policy, but are there any headwinds? Is there any stopping if it needs to be?

Carla Freeman: Yes, I mean, first of all, you have a Chinese economy that's just not doing as well as it was. It's facing significant challenges and, and countries around the world are also not able to handle the kind of debt that doing these projects requires them to take on. So, what Xi Jinping has proposed in this latest meeting is that not only that China exercise a lot more caution in doing investments. So, there'll be a push for greater oversight of some of these projects, but also that they are more focused on soft infrastructure, digital infrastructure, for example, and also that the kinds of infrastructure projects are more modest in scale. So, the new mantra is going to be small as beautiful for the BRI going forward. Nonetheless, Xi has put a lot of money, another 100 billion or so, down on the table for the BRI so it's definitely here to stay.

Laura Coates: I mean, they it sounds like, from what you're saying China has less capital to lend for one issue, and then economic insecurity strains for another, but has have they faced a lot of scrutiny in these first 10 years. Will be they'll be more later?

Carla Freeman: Yes, I think you're gonna see more scrutiny because you've had 10 years, it was a lot of a lot of hype, a lot of build up a lot of excitement. Because there were just enough signature projects built that countries got excited about this, there's a huge infrastructure gap to be filled in developing countries up all over the world. And so, countries were eager to have China's capability. I mean, China is very good at building roads, very good at building high speed trains and other infrastructure, were very eager to participate in a BRI project or other infrastructure project because not all of them fall under BRI, involving China. But now a lot of these countries are saddled with immense debt and are having challenges repaying that debt. Also, they faced problems with forced resettlement of populations with often consequences for the stability of their countries. Environmental degradation has been associated with a lot of these projects. And so now that the hype is over, there's a lot more international scrutiny. Also, a lot of other countries have gotten into the infrastructure game. The G7 has its own infrastructure plan, the US has a blue dot network that is designed to help ensure that country's infrastructure projects are meeting high standards, the Japanese have one, Europeans have their own, and so there's a lot more competition as well, which one hopes will push a standard, even those projects built under the Belt and Road higher.

Laura Coates: This is really, really helpful to get your perspective and insight on all of this. Thank you so much for joining us this morning. I really appreciate it.

Carla Freeman: Thank you for having me. And as we all should watch the Belt and Road going forward. We'll see what happens over the next 10 years.

Laura Coates: We certainly will, thank you so much.

Carla Freeman: Thanks.