Book review by Raj Shekhar Mehta
Title – “Belt and Road - A
Chinese World Order”
Author - Bruno Macaes, Senior Fellow, Hudson Institute, USA and Renmin
Institute, China, Formal Portugal
Europe Minister, Commentator, BBC, CNN ,Al jazeera
Place – United Kingdom / India
Publisher – Penguin Random House India Pvt Lt
Publication Date – 2018 UK / 2019 India
Edition – First
Pages – 227
Price – Rs 599/-
ISBN -9780670092307
Book Review by – R S Mehta
Belt and Road is a fascinating account of China’s unprecedented economic
growth bursting its seams. Having crossed its boundaries, it is poised to spill
over the entire globe. In its brief existence of six years, Belt and Road, has metamorphosed
from Silk Road to OBOR to BRI. However,
one thing that remained constant in all its avatars is its propensity to cause
controversy.
Having first ignored then dismissed and later seized with the sheer
scale, scope, intent and the strong transformational potential of Belt and
Road, the western world suddenly woke up to its impact when the rumbling sound
of Chinese BRI juggernaut rolled down the
continents of Eurasia, Africa & Latin America shaking the very foundation on
which the current world order rested. Caught off guard, the western world went
into a huddle, forming groups of nations to protect its turf and counter the
challenges that Mr Xi’s ambitious world vision posed to the existing order.
Thanks to BRI, today the world power has undergone a quick re-alignment, making
the world look much like it looked at the eve of WW- II and the cold war
days.
It goes to the credit of Mr Bruno Macus, the erstwhile Portuguese
ambassador to EEU, to foresee, like the fabled Nostradamus, what was to come. He,
in his book “Belt and Road – The Chinese World Order”, gave in graphic detail, a
clear picture well in advance of what
the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) was all about and how it was going to impact
the course of human history on this planet in the years to come.
Today what we see in the world is much in line with what was visualised
by the author at the time of scripting this book in 2017-18. Author in the preface
itself had mentioned how the existing “world order” was about to undergo an
unprecedented change. It also predicted with uncanny precision that India and
China were the two key players who were destined to give the new order its
final shape in Asia which in turn would shape the new world order.(Preface
p.vii-x)
In the above dynamics, Mr Bruno Macus was right in pointing out that China
was to be the main driver of this change and Belt and Road was to become one of its most important
instrument to affect that change. “Belt and Road” as per the author, “is the Chinese plan to build a new world
order replacing the US led international system.” (p.5). The scope and global
extents to which Belt and Road reaches out, clearly indicates that “China is
the only country today in the world displaying universal character that is
overstepping its boundaries, extending to distant geographies.” This the author
says, is a “distinctive trait, which till now had been an exclusive feature of
America foreign policy”(p.5).
Author at the time of writing this book had speculated that future of
mankind would depend significantly on the answer to the question whether the new
world order being crafted by China was going to be similar to the one
established by the western world, or will it be different from it ? All signs
and symptoms he felt indicated that it would be significantly different from
the earlier one. Today, US and the whole democratic world has taken cognition
of these disruptive trends and put their acts together to defend their cherished
values and economic interests from this monumental challenge posed by Mr Xi,s
plans to built a new universe - called the Belt and Road.
In introduction of the book Author reminds readers that the map of the
world in which we live today was drawn by the allied powers in a manner that
put western nations and united states at the centre from where political and
economic power flowed. However, as the decade passed, author feels that America’s
grip over the forces shaping the new world were getting out of its hands and
many emerging powers in Asia were no longer “mirroring themselves as imperfect copies of Western
societies”.
The book is organised under five broad chapters. The first chapter discusses
the circumstances in which the Belt
and Road was conceptualised in China during 2013-15 and formally launched in
2017. BRI has been joined since by 140 nations of Asia, Europe, Africa and
Latin America. This web like maze of ambitious intercontinental projects spread
unevenly all around the globe, but mostly concentrated in Central Asia, are
expected to complete by 2049 coinciding with the centenary of PRC.
Belt and Road Initiative intends to integrate the European continent with
that of Asia through improved communication over land comprising rail, road,
energy pipelines, power grids, economic zones, supply chains, warehousing and
transit points etc that is expected to gradually re-start the old traditional
economic engine of “Eurasia” and rejuvenate the combined trading potential of
Europe and Asia that once occupied the epicentre of world economy. Eurasian
trade, the author claims is “close to $2 Trillion per annum, that is more than
double the volume of Transatlantic trade and significantly more than the volume
of Trans-pacific trade”. In recorded human history of nearly two to three
thousand years, central Asia had always constituted the backbone of world
economy. It is also the area where the physical and political restrictions
today are most significant and therefore, where the potential for growth is the
highest. “Who ever is able to build and control the infrastructure, linking the
two ends of Eurasia” the author ; like the father of geopolitics, Sir Halford Mackinder
; feels “will rule the world”.(p.3) The
Belt and Road also has a component by which it envisages creating Maritime Silk
Road connecting Africa and Latin America by sea route and Arctic Silk Road
connecting Asia, Europe and American continents through the now fast melting
Arctic northern route cutting down the sailing time around the world
drastically.
The second Chapter “Nuts and Bolts” deals with the administration,
logistics and financial architecture that funds and fuels the Belt and Road.
These mammoth inter-continental projects of unprecedented scale, scope and
dimension are expected to consume up to 2 - 4 Trillion Dollars worth finance in the
next few decades. Bulk of these finances are coming from China’s own internal
banking systems as loans, but some proportion are also coming through international
and private FIs like the AIIB, HSBC etc. Author has not failed to look into the
aspects related to the fragility, political sensitivity, sustainability and
vulnerability of the overall financial architecture on which the future of these
project rests. Debt trap syndrome of recipient nations are also dwelt
upon.
The third Chapter, deals with the economic dimensions of china’s rise in
which the author brings in the concept of global value chain and links Belt and
Road to china’s effort to not only
prevent it from falling into the middle income trapped country status but
its determination to migrate from the middle of the value chain to a position
where the exclusive club of nations sit on the top of this chain. Chinese
attempts to transfer its low level manufacturing along with the over-capacities
of its giant construction companies, mostly SOE’s, beyond its borders and
creation of a parallel market for Chinese product, processes, technologies and
standards from which US will be entirely absent, is also brought out
prominently. In the fourth Chapter dealing with the impact of this project on world
politics, author has tried to explains the geopolitical dimensions of India’s stand
on Belt and Road as well as the development of the concept of QUAD and
Indo-Pacific as measures to counter the China’s overreach to the world. In hind
sight, it is interesting to notice the validation of author’s accurate
assessment of global implication of Chinese Belt and Road when they are matched
with the current extreme international reactions to it , witnessing by us today.
In the final chapter Maçães basically talks about three scenarios,(p.166)
in which Chinese ambitions were likely to lead it. In the first scenario, China turns out a
prosperous and successful economy, conforming to Western political and social
model. This scenario does not envisage China replacing US hegemony but ends up developing
alternate institutions in finance, trade, infrastructure and security to reduce
dependence on the West. In the second scenario China replaces US primacy as the
leading political and economic power of the world. However, for this author
notes that ‘China will need to offer the world a vision of international order
that is legitimate and functional’ (168). In the third scenario author
visualises a serious ‘clash between two visions of the world order’ (169), in
which Belt and Road poses a direct challenge to Western democracy, free market
system and its liberalism.
Since in 2018, US-China trade war had not yet begun, Bruno Maçães withheld his institutive
preference for any of the above three scenarios. However we, as readers two
years later, can see with fair degree of certainty that superpower relationship
indeed picked up the third option. Therefore, it can be safely concluded that
the author in his book did a great job of insightfully capturing the underlying
invisible trends shaping the international relationships at that point of time and
predicted with great accuracy what the future held for the two super powers.
One major deficiency reader may find in this book is the absence of a
map so critical for the subject. Also those familiar with the overseas
activities of china during the last decades would notice author’s omission to
mention the fact that many of the
projects, shown as part of Belt and Road in 2017 were actually China’s pre-existing
overseas projects already in progress for many years in the past. Barring these
shortcomings, Belt and Road is an important piece of analysis that is a must read for those interested in
understanding the cause of superpower rivalry and impact of the control of
trade routes and sea lanes of communication (SLOCs) on global geopolitics.
About
Reviewer -
RS Mehta is a veteran IAF officer retired
from the Indian Air Force as a Group Captain in 2012 . He is now a visiting faculty in the Departmrnt of
History, at Amity University, Noida, and also researching “Geopolitical Impact
of BRI on South Asia and Indian ocean Region” at the same university.
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