By  Zeno Leoni and  Federica Santoro.

BRI is the framework of China’s trans-continental, multi-dimensional, and pluri-billionaire grand strategy. As explained in the reportA Study of ICT Connectivity for the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI): Enhancing the Collaboration in China-Central Asia Corridor, published by the United Nations’ agency ESCAP, this project’s aims are: “(1) To enhance policy coordination; (2) To improve infrastructure connectivity; (3) To reinforce trade and investment cooperation; (4) To move forward with financial integration; and (5) To support people-to-people collaboration”.

To achieve these objectives, three sets of BRI tools stand out among Others:

• firstly, joined by 97 states, the AIIB represents the BRI’s financial backbone. Challenging the Western, short-termed and consumerist development model, the AIIB’s mission is that of sponsoring infrastructures growth.;

• secondly, Chinese cosmopolitanism tianxia – literally, “all under Heaven” – is the BRI’s ideological cover. This construct reflects a purpose for a “community of shared destiny for mankind”. Indeed, it aims at building a world order where nations live in a trade- and exchange-induced “harmony”. Contrarily to US liberal universalism, tianxiamakes no demands on the domestic political system of BRI’s partners;

• thirdly, a return to 19^thcentury-styled geopolitical revisionism such as territorialism in the South China Sea, increasing military spending and the quest for a blue-water navy to patrol the Indian Ocean it will potentially provide the iron fist to the BRI.

Beijing’s image of this order is Sino-centric. This leads to some critical questions: is BRI synonym with Chinese empire? Although “empire” has both positive and negative connotations, in its neutral meaning it is a conflation of economic with (geo-)political dynamics. Therefore, is the BRI merely a commercial plan?.

According to Colin Flint and Cuiping Zhu, the BRI has to be seen through the lenses of a “‘single logic’ of competition in the capitalist world-economy”, where “firms and states are connected as the former seeks to maximize profits while states (i) seek to ‘capture’ that economic activity within their borders, (ii) make global connections that maximize the benefits of global economic flows for their ‘domestic’ economy, and (iii) intertwine economic agendas with geopolitical goals”.

This picture describes well Beijing’s “Go West” strategy. The driver of this outward looking approach is blamed by some upon China’s overaccumulation crisis begun in the early 2000’s. As explained by Balihar Sanghera and Elmira Satybaldieva, “economic decentralisation created a fragmented national economy, in which local governments engaged in anarchic competition to attract foreign direct investment. This nurtured overinvestment and uncoordinated construction of redundant production capacity and infrastructure”. This was exacerbated by the Great Recession and the decline in export towards the West.

Within such a framework, China considers Central Asia and Eurasia as strategic regions. Indeed, these territories lie at the crossroad of important trade routes but also contain abundant reserves of natural resources such as oil, gas, minerals and metals. 

Indeed, in the last six years China’s BRI has made an impressing impact in the Eurasian continent, as it transpires from the report Chinese Grand Strategy in the Eurasian Heartland, published by SKOLKOVO – Institute for Emerging Market Studies (IEMS).

Two of the six BRI’s economic corridors pass through the region, connecting China to the European Union and the Middle East. Eurasian Heartland’s trade with China has been growing at double-digit rates over a number of years.  It has reached $140bn in 2018, spreading across over 160 projects mainly in Russia and Kazakhstan, the largest economies in the region. Indeed, these two countries have received 65% of all Chinese money directed to Central Asia.

Market dynamics and global trends define Sino-Russia relations. Both traditionally Western-oriented economically, in times of crisis like nowadays they see each other as the centre of an alternative international order. That explains why China invested $70bn dollars in the Power of Siberia pipeline construction project, and in the intensification of Sino-Russian economic cooperation in Arctic LNG projects. China, like Russia, is interested in exploring the Northern Sea Route since Western-imposed sanction hit Moscow Russia. Also the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) is seen essential for China in Central Asia to provide Chinese company with access to regional market.

Kazakhstan – after Russia – is the largest country in the region, very rich in those mineral resources and fertile lands that China needs.  Xi Jinping choose its capital, Nur-Sultan (former Astana), to launch the BRI in 2013. Since then, the Belt and Road Initiative has become one of the most important enablers of Foreign Direct Investments (FDI). It transformed the country in a regional infrastructure hub and led to the creation of a Special Economic Zone around the Khorgos Dry port, a key logistic target. China also considers Kazakhstan an important supplier of oil and gas: notably, 76% of Chinese FDI in the country have been directed to the energy sector. 

But other Central Asian countries are increasingly involved in the BRI. The South Caucasian resource-rich Azerbaijan represents one of the very few alternatives for Europe to the Russian gas and it is set to work with China on energy and transit to Europe. China National Petroleum Corporation (CNCP) is helping to explore fields in Turkmenistan, for years China’s main gas supplier in the region. The country is not only a source of natural gas but a potential test bed for Huawei telecom equipments. State Owned and Private Chinese Telecom companies are implementing a broad range of projects in the Tech Sector, including a smart city test in Baku and a data centre in Kazakhstan, providing loans to help countries to develop new capacity using Chinese Huawei equipments.

One of the most ambitious plan for the next 3-5 years is the construction of a trans-Eurasian data super interconnector (TASIM) that should develop through at least three Central Asian countries: Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Azerbaijan.

Another BRI receiver is strategically located between Russia and the European Union and has very high transit potential for China’s infrastructure. In Belarus, the upgrading of highways has been financed by Chinese Exim Bank loans. Similarly, in Uzbekistan China proposes to build a new rail link from Xinjiang. Meanwhile, in Kyrgyzstan the BRI has provoked concerns for being a controversial plan. A win-win situation at first sight that would instead create benefits for Chinese export only, opening an additional route and leading to a socio-economic divide beetween the North and the South of the country.

Belt and Road Initiative is the vastest geopolitical and investment project in human history, although it has never been explicitly presented as such. Indeed, it still remains an ambiguous undertaking. Central Asia and Caucasus countries provide a natural link to Europe and some Islamic states. Enhancing cooperation with the Islamic world, is key for China to maintain security and stability in a region where the BRI’s effects are diverse and complex.

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In the picture Zeno Leoni.

Zeno Leoni, PhD, Teaching Fellow in ‘Challenges to the International Order’, Defence Studies Department, Affiliate Lau China Institute  – King’s College London.

Federica Santoro, Dr, Analyst of EU-China Relations and Chinese Strategic Policy. Master Degree in Global Strategy and Security at the Italian Defense Higher Studies Institute of Rome. 

Link:

Link to the original publication in Vision & Global Trends:

https://www.vision-gt.eu/news/economics/eurasian-countries-within-belt-and-road-initiative-what-game-is-being-played/

By Dr. Betilde Muñoz-Pogossian, Director of Social Inclusion at the Organization of American States.

According to UNICEF, there are about 200 million afrodescedants in the Americas, an estimated 30% of the population. Of this, close to 50% includes children, and adolescents younger than 18 years old. If the 200 million people of African descent in the region were a country, they would be 53 times the size of Panama, 19 times the size of the Dominican Republic, 10 times the size of Chile. Who can deny they are an integral component of what we are as a region? 

The fact is, however, that regardless of the last few decades of economic growth, estimates indicate that afrodescedants continue to exhibit the highest levels of poverty, social exclusion, and discrimination. As a result of racism and discrimination, 90% of this population in the countries of the region live in poverty and extreme poverty with 70 to 80% earning less than 2 dollars a day. Often, they do not have universal access to health, education, housing or clean water. They also face more obstacles in terms of getting a job, and keeping it, and earn salaries that are generally less than the average. 

Afrodescedants also face challenges in the exercise of their political rights. Although they are included as voters, they generally have limited possibilities to compete for public office due to the fact that, among other things, they are overwhelmingly part of the socio-economic groups with the lowest earning capacity.

In 2013, year for which the most up-to-date comparative data exists, their representation in political decision-making posts was far from ideal. In Brazil, for example, only 8.60% of the total legislators were afrodescedants in a country where this group represents 50.9% of the population. In Colombia, where they represent 10.5% of the population, their congressional representation only reached 4.60%. In Costa Rica, with 7.8% of afrodescedants, in 2013, there was not even one legislator of African descent. In Venezuela, with 53.4% of afrodescedants, only 2.40% of the National Assembly were of this origin.

Whereas it is important to consider affirmative action policies that level the playing field for afrodescedants to compete, it is equally important to address the structural problems that cause their social exclusion. After all, which person who has to provide for his or her basic needs regarding food, housing or health can effectively enter the political arena and compete for public office? 

To shed light on these challenges, the Member states of the Organization of American States declared, last March 25, 2018, the “Inter-American Week for People of African Descent in the Americas”. The objective is to foster greater awareness and respect for the diversity of the heritage and culture of people of African descent and their contribution to the development of societies.

This celebration also seeks to recognize the important contributions of persons of African descent to the politics, economies, cultures, and societies of the region. The road map has been developed: the OAS Plan of Action for the Decade for People of African Descent in the Americas (2016–2025), which prioritizes lines of action to promote the Recognition, Justice, and Development of Afrodescedants in the region with the ultimate objective of closing the gaps in the enjoyment of all their human rights.

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(Opinions are personal. They do not represent the views of the OAS).

ICMP Director-General Kathryne Bomberger and the Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs, Stef Blok.

Netherlands is a key strategic partner for the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP), supporting ICMP’s Headquarters in The Hague and supporting its core functions and country programs around the world, ICMP Director-General Kathryne Bomberger said.  

Ms Bomberger was speaking after a meeting in The Hague with Foreign Minister Stef Blok. She highlighted the fact that “the Netherlands was one of the key players behind the signing – with the United Kingdom, Belgium, Luxembourg and Sweden – of the ICMP Agreement in December 2014,” and noted that the Agreement, which establishes ICMP as the only international organization in the world that exclusively addresses the issue of missing and disappeared persons, “reflects the emerging international consensus about the nature and scale of the global missing persons issue and the urgent need to tackle this issue in a coherent and effective way.”   

The Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) facilitated ICMP’s move to Headquarters in The Hague in 2015 and also ICMP’s laboratory transition to The Hague, which was completed at the end of 2017. 

Since this relocation, ICMP has developed its existing partnership with the Netherlands Forensic Institute, and forged ties with Rotterdam Univeristy and Leiden University, including  through HumanityX , an initiative that serves as the innovation engine of The Hague Humanity Hub. ICMP has been able to develop the operational capacity of its laboratory and begin applying next generation DNA technologies that will advance the science of human identification, which is critical to providing irrefutable evidence of a person’s identity.   

From 2015 to 2018, the MFA and the City of The Hague granted ICMP more than 2.5 Million EUR, enabling it to implement, through its Headquarters, core programs that are essential to carry out its global work.  The Dutch authorities indicated at the end of last year that they will provide funding of 1.5 million EUR over three years beginning in 2019 so that ICMP can maintain core Headquarters capacities that are needed in order to carry out its work.  

Dutch support has helped ICMP, among other things, to set in place systems in Iraq that will assist in identifying those missing from ISIS crimes, launch a new program to gather information about missing persons from Syrians who have sought refuge in countries neighboring Syria, support legislative and institutional processes in Colombia that will ensure that the missing persons framework established under the 2016 peace agreement can operate successfully, test DNA samples from victims of enforced disappearance from the 1964-85 military dictatorship in Brazil, improve the capacity and coordination of countries in the Mediterranean, including Italy, Greece, Malta and Cyprus, to account for missing migrants, and strengthen stakeholder networks among civil society, government officials, and international organizations engaged in the missing persons issue.  

The Netherlands was one of ICMP’s the earliest supporters after it was established in 1996, and has been a major and long-standing donor to ICMP’s Western Balkans Program. It has also supported ICMP’s development in response to the global challenge of missing persons.

The issue affects countries throughout the world and has multiple causes. ICMP’s mandate is to secure the cooperation of governments and others in locating missing persons from conflict, human rights abuses, disasters, organized crime, irregular migration and other causes and to assist them in doing so.  It is the only international organization tasked exclusively to work on the issue of missing persons.