China to hold grand Belt and Road Forum meet next week: Will India skip biggest diplomatic event of

[nang2]

Most western leaders are not attending either.

The project doesn't involve many western countries anyway. It is Chinese attempt to create/access more markets in the areas that have been ignored by the west.

 

[IndoCarib]

China faces resistance to a cherished theme of its foreign policy

Silk routes are not always as appealing as they sound


ON APRIL 10th a freight train pulled out of Barking station in London carrying Scotch whisky, baby milk and engineering equipment. It arrived in Yiwu in eastern China (see map) nearly three weeks later, completing the second-longest round-trip train journey ever made (after Yiwu to Madrid and back, a record set in 2014). It lopped around a month off the time of a sea journey from Britain to China.

A day after the train’s departure, a less ballyhooed but potentially more significant event took place in the port of Kyaukphyu in Myanmar. Workers started transferring oil from a tanker into a new pipeline that runs from the Burmese port north to Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province in south-western China. The pipeline bypasses the Malacca Strait, through which 80% of Chinese oil imports are shipped. Eventually, energy supplies to Chongqing, the largest city in the west of China, will no longer be vulnerable to political disruption in the strait.

Both events show that Xi Jinping’s “Belt and Road Initiative”, a central feature of the Chinese president’s foreign policy, is establishing what generals like to call facts on the ground. By financing around $150bn of infrastructure spending a year in countries to China’s south and west (along the old Silk Road), Mr Xi hopes to create new markets for Chinese firms and new spheres of influence for his government.

The president is preparing to host a lavish party in Beijing to celebrate the project—the Belt and Road Forum, as the event is known. On May 14th and 15th leaders from 28 or so countries will join the festivities, including Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Myanmar’s de facto leader, Aung San Suu Kyi. Mr Xi will use the gathering to project his country’s self-confidence and his own as a global leader. But looks can deceive. In reality, Mr Xi faces a backlash against his project. At the forum, he will try to reassure his partners that he is not attempting to stuff their mouths with gold.

Not so fast

The scheme is running into three linked problems. First, it is unclear what its priorities are, or who is running it. “We haven’t really come up with a specific goal,” says Zou Tongxuan of Beijing International Studies University. Every province has its own belt-and-road investment plan. So do hundreds of state-owned firms. The government’s strong backing has helped to get many projects up and running faster than might have happened otherwise (Mr Xi first began to talk about the idea only in 2013). But no one is in day-to-day charge, so thousands of financially dubious schemes have the imprimatur of a belt-and-road project. And the overweening behaviour of Chinese companies in some countries where they operate has stoked fears in some places of an over-mighty China.

The different names given to the project reflect China’s struggle to make it sound palatable to foreigners. Mr Xi first talked about a “Silk Road economic belt”. That was uncontroversial, but to expand its geographical scope a new term was devised: Yidai Yilu, or One [land] Belt, One [maritime] Road. That sounded ugly in English and, officials realised, risked implying that it was all about a big Chinese plan: they wanted the venture to be seen as a co-operative one. So they came up with the anodyne-sounding belt-and-road translation (despite the unfortunate acronym it produces for the forum: BARF).

A second problem is finding enough profitable projects to match the vaulting ambition of the scheme, which aims to create a Eurasian trading bloc rivalling the American-dominated transatlantic area. It is not certain, for example, how successful the London-Yiwu rail line will be, given that (though faster) it is more than twice as costly as shipping. The Chinese hope to export their expertise in building high-speed rail. But China’s speedy construction of thousands of kilometres of it at home depended on cheap labour and the power to evict anyone who got in the way. That may be hard to replicate.

Belt-and-road projects are failing already. In Kara-Balta in Kyrgyzstan, Zhongda China Petrol, a state-owned company, built a big oil refinery—then found it could not buy enough crude oil to run it at more than 6% of capacity. The country’s deputy prime minister called the plant’s construction “ridiculous”; locals are protesting against its environmental impact.

China hopes the belt and road will bring others into its orbit, including Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria and Ukraine. But these countries are not exactly champions in the World Bank’s ease-of-doing-business league. According to Tom Miller of Gavekal, a consultancy, the Chinese think they will lose 80% of their money in Pakistan, 50% in Myanmar and 30% in Central Asia. Perhaps they can afford this, but it would be a costly success.

Third, locals in some countries are angry about what they view as China’s heavy-handedness. In parts of Asia, democratic politics have been challenging China’s commonly used approach to deal-making—cosying up to unsavoury regimes. This had begun before Mr Xi devised the belt-and-road scheme. In 2011 Myanmar suspended work on a vast Chinese-financed dam at Myitsone, to popular acclaim. In Sri Lanka, the government elected in 2015 has been engaged in endless wrangling with China over the building of a Chinese-invested port in the home town of the country’s autocratic former president. In January protests against China’s plans there turned violent.

Even in Pakistan, one of China’s closest friends in Asia, Mr Xi has been forced to abandon his usual mantra of “non-interference” in others’ internal affairs. Late last year China openly appealed to Pakistan’s opposition politicians not to resist construction of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, a part of the belt that links Xinjiang, China’s westernmost province, with Gwadar on the Indian Ocean. Pakistan deploys a force of around 10,000 soldiers to guard the corridor against militant attacks.

The problem is partly one of scale: China is so vast that belt-and-road countries fear being overwhelmed by it. Loans from one bank, China Eximbank, for example, account for a third of Kyrgyzstan’s foreign debt. Yunnan is one of China’s poorer provinces. Yet its economy is still four times bigger than that of its more populous neighbour, Myanmar. Countries both long for and dread Chinese investment.

China is trying to change its ways. NGOs in South-East Asia say that Chinese firms, which had previously treated local critics with disdain, have started to take their concerns more seriously. Chinese banks are asking international institutions—sovereign-wealth funds, pension funds and so on—to join them in lending to belt-and-road projects, in the hope that this will help ensure higher standards. At the forthcoming forum, China is likely to emphasise links between the belt-and-road programme and other infrastructure projects that have been launched independently of it, such as a new transport network around Baku in Azerbaijan. The aim will be to show that Mr Xi’s project is not a threat. But this will be another minor adjustment of wording. The belt-and-road express has left the station. China is merely trying to improve the on-board service.

http://www.economist.com/news/china...-sound-china-faces-resistance-cherished-theme

 

[[Bregs]]

All the best to china, India wont be joining this in present circumstances

 

[Indiran Chandiran]

http://www.firstpost.com/world/chin...est-diplomatic-event-of-the-year-3432194.html

China to hold grand Belt and Road Forum meet next week: Will India skip biggest diplomatic event of the year?

China’s Belt and Road Forum, the meeting to flag off its 'One Belt, One Road' proposal, titled 'Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation' on 14 May in Beijing is billed as the biggest diplomatic event of the year. Enormous efforts have gone into making the two-day event a grand success.

The ambitious initiative to connect China through transport corridors to Asia, Central Asia, Europe and maritime routes to Africa and the Pacific has some economic objectives, but to many it signals a massive expansion of China’s political, economic and strategic influence. The Belt-Road Initiative has become the centerpiece of China’s foreign engagements. China has been keen to include India in its Belt-Road Initiative.

But Union Finance and Defence Minister Arun Jaitley expressed Indian reservations at the proposals in the first official Indian comment on China’s ambitious infrastructure initiative. Speaking at an Asian Development Bank organised round-table discussion in Yokohama, Japan, Jaitley said that although India supported the concept of regional connectivity, it has "serious reservations" about the Chinese OBOR project because of sovereignty issues.

India has opposed the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), one of the projects of the Belt-Road Initiative as it passes through Pakistan occupied Kashmir. The CPEC is one of the important components of the OBOR, linking China’s Xinjiang province to the Chinese-built Gwadar port on Pakistan’s Arabian Sea coast.

China is making efforts to ensure a high attendance of world leaders that would be a grand endorsement of Chinese president Xi Jinping’s economic vision. A senior Chinese official has warned that India risks being isolated if it decides not to attend the Belt-Road Forum. India has not responded to the Chinese invitation as yet and staying away from the event would reinforce India’s objections to the Chinese corridor through disputed territory. China has not held any serious discussion with India on the issue. Unless Beijing makes an overture to New Delhi before the meeting, India has no reason to send a minister to attend the event.

Beijing’s plans will have implications for New Delhi as they would bring large infrastructural change in South Asia, even as China deepens its economic ties with Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Maldives and especially Pakistan. All of India’s neighbours with the exception of Bhutan, have shown interest or signed up on infrastructure projects with Chinese companies.

In South Asia, China has offered to build ports, airports and special economic zones in Sri Lanka, the Airport Link Bridge, road links in the atolls and upgradation of the international airport in the Maldives. Bangladesh signed agreements with China for 25 projects worth more than $20 billion during Xi’s visit to Dhaka in October 2016. China is funding infrastructure and energy projects in Nepal; these include the airport at Pokhara, a hydropower project, and a proposal to build a rail link from the border to Pokhara through Kathmandu.

China is heavily engaged in Southeast Asia in the construction of ports and pipeline projects in Myanmar, a high-speed rail project in Thailand, Malaysia’s East Coast Rail link, and a high-speed rail from Jakarta to Bandung in Indonesia.

When the ambitious Belt and Road initiative was first announced by Xi in late 2013, there was some scepticism about the Chinese proposal. The proposal has been added to and tweaked, and four years later, the 'Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation' is taking shape with leaders from across regions attending the meeting. Around 110 countries are to be represented at the two-day event, with 28 of them to have top-level representation.

The leaders will include Russian president Vladimir Putin, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Indonesian president Joko Widodo, Malaysian prime minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak, Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi as well as national leaders from Vietnam, Kazakhstan, Pakistan and the Philippines along with others from Africa and Europe. UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres, World Bank president Jim Yong Kim and International Monetary Fund managing director Christine Lagarde and about 100 ministerial level delegates will be in attendance.

According to Foreign Minister Wang Yi, China expects to sign agreements with around 20 countries and 20 organisations at the meeting and give an added thrust to projects for which MoUs have already be signed. In the past two years, Chinese construction companies have signed agreements for large-scale infrastructure projects in several countries. Countries as far away as New Zealand have signed up for cooperation on OBOR projects.

China’s Belt-Road projects are expected to utilise its capacity in construction and manufacturing sectors, provide the means to give Chinese enterprises a global footprint and increase development activity in its own relatively backward border provinces. It also positions China in a central role in creating a transnational network connecting and integrating the economies of Asia, Europe and Africa. In contrast, the US, especially under President Donald Trump, does not have a global economic vision that can match China’s Belt-Road Initiative vision and offer any substantial benefits to developing countries.

Maan na maan , hum tere mehmaan .Guess this is Chinese "gunboat " diplomacy .

 

[ashok321]

• Why India shouldn't deny itself the OBOR opportunity

 

[Jlaw]

• Why India shouldn't deny itself the OBOR opportunity

The comment sections is funny. Thanks.

 

[tw00tw00]

India again has adopted isolationism while the rest of the region is moving toward trade and integration. India is again doing itself a disservice.

 

[Sloth 22]

https://twitter.com/x/status/863286432726622208

 

[Laozi]

While India decided to skip

Pakistan will be present there in more than FULL strength


The high-level delegation including PM Nawaz Sharif, Punjab CM Shehbaz Sharif, KP CM Pervez Khattak, Balochistan CM Sanaullah Zehri and Sindh CM Murad Ali Shah will attend the two-day One Belt One Road summit in the neighbouring country.



The forum will commence from Sunday

Close allies of the premier including Finance Minister Ishaq Dar, Railways Minister Khawaja Saad Rafique, Foreign Secretary Sartaj Aziz, Federal Minister for Planning & Development Ahsan Iqbal, Minister for Commerce Khurram Dastgir Khan and others are a part of the high-level delegation from Pakistan which is to attend the summit regarding China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).

http://www.suchtv.pk/pakistan/gener...aves-for-beijing-along-with-all-four-cms.html

 

[Great Sachin]

I thought India is dying to join CPEC and jealous to Pakistani for getting that opportunity.

 

[Srinivas]

Right decision!

 

[Sloth 22]

Our sovereignty is more important than few roads , and I am glad that the government atleast showed some spine this time.

 

[Hareeb]

If OBOR forum was a guy, Indians would have been like:

 

[Sloth 22]

India will skip China's high- profile Belt and Road summit beginning here tomorrow in view of sovereignty concerns related to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a flagship project of the initiative that is expected to play a dominant role in the two-day meet.

While there is no official word, informed sources told PTI that India will not take part in the meet, contrary to Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi's announcement that India will have a representative at the Belt and Road Forum (BRF), a prestigious initiative of Chinese President Xi Jinping.

http://m.economictimes.com/news/def...com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ETTWMain

 

[Laozi]

Our sovereignty is more important than few roads , and I am glad that the government atleast showed some spine this time.

Yup, First inviting Dalai Lama

Now, skipping OBOR Forum

Next, India can decide to provide "No Limit" Moral and diplomatic support to Baloch and GB separatists to choke the Entry / Exit points of CPEC. That will surely again be showing some spine.