China is on Sunday to host a summit showcasing its ambitious drive to revive ancient Silk Road trade routes and lead a new era of globalization.
Leaders from 28 nations, including Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, are to attend the two-day meeting at Yanqi Lake, in a Beijing suburb near the Great Wall.
However, Western powers seem less enthusiastic about the project, with Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni the only leader coming from the G7 industrialized nations.
The forum is to promote Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) “One Belt, One Road” initiative, a massive Chinese-bankrolled infrastructure project to link the country with Africa, Asia and Europe through a network of ports, railways, roads and industrial parks.
Beijing’s push comes as Washington’s leadership in global trade is changing under US President Donald Trump’s nationalist “America first” stance.
In Europe, anti-globalization sentiment has grown among voters and the continent has been rattled by Britain’s looming exit from the EU.
“There is a pressing need in today’s world to have a shared, open and inclusive cooperation platform ... to jointly tackle global challenges,” Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) told reporters ahead of the summit.
“What we need is not a hero that acts alone, but partners of cooperation that stick together,” he said.
The initiative spans about 65 countries representing 60 percent of the global population and about a third of global GDP.
Analysts are skeptical that China can take the lead in global commerce, while also saying that an integrated world trade system where the Chinese Communist Party sets the rules could come with serious risks and hidden costs.
EU Ambassador to China Hans Dietmar Schweisgut said that EU companies have repeatedly complained about unequal market access in China.
“We hope China will implement domestically what it is preaching internationally,” Schweisgut told reporters on Tuesday. “The Chinese market, when it comes to investment, is not as opened as the European market to Chinese companies.”
However, Europe’s large absence is a “missed opportunity” indicative of a “very inward-looking, very Eurocentric” outlook on the rise as leaders have less to gain politically at home from engagement with China, said Jean-Pierre Lehmann of Switzerland’s IMD business school.
“China’s a reality and it’s not going to go away. We can make things better by engaging with China instead of needlessly containing it,” he said.
New York-based Fitch Ratings expressed concern that “genuine infrastructure needs and commercial logic might be secondary to political motivations,” leading to “a heightened risk of projects proving unprofitable.”
Struggling countries could be saddled with Chinese loans requiring payment regardless of project performance, it said.
The forum is to be China’s first chance since the project’s launch in 2013 to formally communicate its policies to participants on a large scale, said Li Ziguo (李自國), deputy director of a research center for the project at the China Institute for International Studies.
“Many projects have been signed, but these need to be implemented on the ground,” he said.
Yang Shu (楊恕), of Lanzhou University’s Institute for Central Asian Studies, said many countries still do not really understand the project.
“Even China is still unclear on what the ultimate goal is,” Yang said.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese