Raffaello Pantucci

Opinion | As the face of China’s foreign policy, the belt and road will survive debt and coronavirus

The belt and road was not meant to be a single large infrastructure project. Rather, it provides the great machine of China’s external-facing apparatus with a new driving vision

With no fixed goalposts, recent setbacks to projects that fall under its umbrella can be woven into the narrative of China’s march towards greater engagement with the world

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An exhibitor sells goods at the “Belt and Road” exhibition area of the 17th China-Asean Expo in Nanning, Guangxi, on November 27. The belt and road is an idea rather than a project, and lends its name to multiple projects and events, even theme songs, cartoons, courses and think tanks. Photo: Xinhua

Raffaello Pantucci

Published: 1:30am, 18 Dec 2020Updated: 4:04am, 18 Dec 2020

Having had such a catastrophic year, the world seems eager to turn the page and jettison what went before. Among the many victims of this purge appears to be the Belt and Road Initiative, which after some seven years of existence is reportedly winding down.

This premature dismissal is based on an interpretation of a vision as a project, and misses how embedded the belt and road is in Chinese foreign-policy thinking.

The belt and road draws on a long tradition of Silk Road conceptions linked to China. Clichés abound when one thinks back to Marco Polo, Matteo Ricci, the epic Battle of Talas in 751 or Ferdinand von Richthofen, who in 1877 coined the Silk Road phrasing after his travels through Asia.

In contemporary Chinese parlance, the idea first came into focus under premier Li Peng, who in 1994 embarked on a tour of Central Asia in the wake of Deng Xiaoping’s historic “Southern Tour” that started China on its communist-capitalist path.

Li’s trip was intended to take place in 1993, though he was reportedly delayed by ill health. Also, the visit did not stop in every Central Asian capital: Tajikistan, in the midst of its brutal civil war, was given a miss. Security was a key aspect of Li’s trip, and requests for support in suppressing militant Uygur networks were made at most stops. But the visit was also framed around trade and connectivity, and reopening the Silk Road across the Eurasian continent to China.

President Xi Jinping plants a tree in Astana, Kazakhstan, in September 2013 during a state visit to the Central Asian country. The belt and road’s centrality in China’s foreign policy thinking can be traced back to Beijing’s outreach to Central Asian countries in the 1990s. Photo: AFP