Macroscope | The great game of the Belt and Road is a global competition for resources, strategic reach and soft power diplomacy
- The backstage sub plot - Tokyo is working on an alternative to BRI - is the bigger stumbling block to any Abe-Xi agreement
- Prospect of Sino-Japan joint infrastructure projects in third-party countries appeared to offer way around dilemma, but is nevertheless a mine-strewn diversion
China’s “Belt and Road Initiative” continues to evolve, occasionally assuming serpentine form as its transport linkages snake their way across Europe and Asia, and sometimes chameleon-like in adapting to different situations.
But none of this can disguise the fundamental conflicts between the world’s great powers provoked by the belt and road plan.
That was apparent last week during the second Belt and Road International Forum in Beijing, and it will be a source of real, if disguised, tension when China’s President Xi Jinping visits Japan in June for the G20 summit and meets his host, the Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
The two will enact a kind of “shadow play,” in which they put on a show of friendship while subplots develop offstage. Their discussion will focus partly on cooperation on joint infrastructure projects in third-party countries but this will require imaginative acting if backstage feuds are to remain concealed.
Much of the discussion in Beijing centred on the allegation that the initiative is China’s pursuit of “debt trap diplomacy,” as a cover to secure control over infrastructure assets including ports and motorways across and beyond Eurasia.
