Belt and Road pushed as protectionism rises

Belt and Road pushed as protectionism rises

BOAO, Hainan: Chinese officials and media executives on Tuesday pushed an ambitious infrastructure and investment program as an answer to rising protectionism and other threats to global economic growth.

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) — a development strategy unveiled in 2013 to link Europe, Africa and Asia — has seen mixed reactions, with the main issue revolving around the debts to be incurred by participating countries.

Chinese government officials who spoke at the 2018 Media Cooperation Forum on Belt and Road rejected this, repeatedly stressing the theme of “Contribution by All, Benefits for All” amid reports that Washington was again preparing to ramp up trade sanctions against Beijing.

Ji Bingxoan, vice chairman of the National Standing Committee of the People’s Congress, said Chinese President Xi Jingping’s vision for the massive development program was one of “mutual understanding and mutual benefit”— a point echoed by other national and regional Party officials.

Li Baoshan, president of the People’s Daily, called the BRI an “appropriate response” to the ongoing “deglobalization” that has led to warnings of lower global growth.

A day earlier, at the separate Asean+3 Media Cooperation Forum, Institute of World Economics and Politics director Zhang Yuyan tagged trade disputes initiated by Washington as the main factor behind the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) recent downgrade of its 2018 and 2019 global growth forecasts.

Earlier in October, the IMF announced that it now expected the world economy to expand by 3.7 percent this year and the next — down 0.2 percentage points from the previous forecast.

Zhang also pointed to the US Federal Reserve’s rate hike program, record-high global debt of around $250 trillion, stock market declines and geopolitical tensions revolving around Syria and Saudi Arabia, among others, as concerns.

At the wider media forum, Rossiyskaya Gazeta General Director Pavel Negoitsa said that against the backdrop of trade wars and treaty abrogations — US President Donald Trump has said he wants out of a nuclear deal with Russia — the BRI had become “more appealing.”

Ng Yat Chun, Singapore Press Holdings CEO, noted the debt concerns surrounding the program, but added that Asean had generally welcomed China’s initiative.

He urged Beijing to tweak commercial viability features to “local conditions” and allow for the employment of more local workers as it was particularly important to secure domestic support.

Details about BRI programs for the Philippines — initially not mentioned as being part of the development strategy — remain scant, but Chinese investments in the country have risen under President Rodrigo Duterte’s pivot to Beijing.

Kou Wei, general manager of China’s State Grid Corp., mentioned in his speech that the company had invested in the Philippines’ “national backbone network.”

State Grid is part of the National Grid Corp. of the Philippines consortium that began operating the country’s power grid in 2009.