Despite its idealistic sentiment, China’s Belt and Road Initiative is actually a ploy to gain political and economic control over other nations, thereby helping it achieve worldwide hegemony, academics said yesterday.
The Taiwan Association of University Professors yesterday held a forum on the initiative in Taipei.
The initiative, proposed in 2013, was meant to create demand for China’s excess production, which would otherwise be difficult for the Chinese government to use, said Chang Ching-hsi (張清溪), a retired National Taiwan University economist.
One of China’s means to achieve this is lending large sums of money to economically weak countries to help them build infrastructure, Chang said, adding that when indebted countries default on such loans, China pounces, demanding that they offer natural resources or control over their ports in return.
The Greek Port of Piraeus, which was sold to the Chinese state-run China Ocean Shipping Co in 2016, has become a Chinese haven for tax evasion and exporting knockoffs, Chang said.
By “squandering” cash overseas and inviting heads of states to summits about the initiative, China seeks to soften criticism leveled against it and gain political influence over other countries, he said.
While it would be difficult for China to generate profits from the initiative, that might be compensated by the political influence gained from it, Chang said, adding that Beijing’s ultimate goal is to supplant the US and become the world’s hegemonic power.
One of the goals China hopes to achieve with the initiative is to make the yuan a world currency, which is one reason it has so generously lent money to other countries, Soochow University economy professor Tsaur Tien-wang (曹添旺) said.
However, China has not succeeded in this regard, as exchange rates between the yuan and other currencies are not stable enough, which causes other countries to lack faith in the yuan, Tsaur said.
Furthermore, the yuan is not yet mature enough in terms of regulation of the financial market in the event of a financial crisis, which has also prevented it from becoming an international currency, he said.
Quoting Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) as saying in 2014 that China is a “peace-loving, amicable and civilized lion that has just awoken from its sleep,” former Presidential Office adviser Huang Tien-lin (黃天麟) said that the lion’s prowling near Taiwan, around the Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台), in the South China Sea and on the border with India has contradicted that claim.
The initiative can lean on “three swords,” Huang said: China’s unparalleled ability to mobilize resources, which helps it overcome harsh climates and terrain when building infrastructure; the large influence China’s 1.4 billion population wields over business giants worldwide; and the country’s vastness means it is blessed with abundant natural resources.
US President Donald Trump is among a handful of national leaders who understand the threats posed by the initiative, and has initiated talks with Japan and the EU to develop a joint infrastructure program to counter the initiative, Huang said.
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