Where next for the Belt and Road?
Episode description
Our new China Research Group paper, written by Eyck Freymann, is now published: 'The UK's Strategic Options: Belt and Road'.
--
Back in 2013, President Xi Jinping unveiled his expansive vision of a modern Silk Road, promising to revolutionise China's global influence. Eight years later, and 130 countries have signed up to Xi’s signature foreign policy. But the ‘project of a century’ remains loosely defined and poorly understood.
Despite accusations of predatory debt diplomacy, Chinese infrastructure lending has been in decline since 2019. Instead, a new phase of the Belt and Road has been accelerated by the pandemic. China has pivoted away from physical infrastructure and accelerated its expansion of the Digital, Green and Health Silk Roads. But what does the future of this version of the Belt and Road Initiative look like? And should like-minded democracies respond?
We were joined by a panel of three experts for a discussion moderated by Tom Tugendhat MP, Chair of the China Research Group.
Jonathan Hillman - Senior Fellow at CSIS and Director of the Reconnecting Asia Project
Meia Nouwens - Senior Fellow at IISS and Digital Silk Road lead
Eyck Freymann - Author of One Belt One Road: Chinese Power Meets the World and doctoral candidate at the University of Oxford