Global connect

One month and counting. More than 20 heads of state and government as well as 1,200 delegates from countries across the world will descend on Beijing for theBelt andRoadForumforInternationalCooperation.

The forum, which will be held on May 14 and 15, will be a landmark event for the initiative launched by President Xi Jinping during a speech delivered at Nazarbayev University in Kazakhstan in September 2013.

Since then under the initiative - which consists of the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road - more than 40 countries and international organizations have signed cooperation agreements with China; and Chinese companies have invested some $50 billion in mainly infrastructure projects.

One of the aims of the forum, however, will be to move the very concept from being just a China-led initiative involving bilateral agreements to a multilateral one that will help foster greater global connectivity.

President Xi made clear his ambitions for the Belt and Road Initiative at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January, when he defended globalization and called for countries to work together to tackle the many uncertainties in the world.

"We should join hands and rise to the challenge. History is created by the brave. Let us boost confidence, take actions and march arm-in-arm toward a bright future," he said.

The main tangible elements of the initiative so far are the Silk Road Fund, for which the Chinese government pledged $40 billion in 2014 for investment in countries along the routes, and also the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, whose founding members consist of many Western countries, including the UK, France and Germany as well leading Asian countries such as India, Pakistan and Vietnam.

Hugh White, professor of strategic studies at Australian National University and an ex-adviser to former Australian prime minister Bob Hawke, believes the forum will be about making clear the initiative is for everyone and not just China.

"For it to work, it has got to be something that has wider ownership and acceptance than just being a Beijing initiative," he says.

"It has the potential to be something very significant. The countries participating will be involved in creating a vision and framework for globalization for the next few decades. So it is of immense significance."

Tom Miller, senior Asia analyst at Gavekal Research and author of the new book, China's Asian Dream: Empire Building Along the New Silk Road, agrees the aim will be to make clear the initiative is very much about joint development.

"The mistake you can make about the Belt and Road Initiative is to think it is purely a Chinese project," he says. "It just can't be that because whatever it (China) is doing it is doing it with enterprises in other countries, so it has to be about joint development."

Edward Tse, founder and CEO of management consultants Gao Feng Advisory, believes Belt and Road is still at the formative stage and the forum will also be about reviewing progress as well as providing a forward vision.

"It is critical for the whole initiative. These leaders are coming together to discuss where to go next. Belt and Road started off as a concept but the concept changed very quickly into some very tangible ideas like the AIIB and the Silk Road Fund and some very real infrastructure projects," he says.

"We don't have 100 percent clarity as to what it is or will evolve into, but on the other hand, the participants have a lot of aligned interests and will want to be part of it."

Some critics of the initiative have seen it as China trying to use it as a means of exerting greater geopolitical influence.

Shen Dingli, professor of international relations and executive dean of the Institute of International Studies at Fudan University, rejects this entirely.

"We have no geopolitical agenda. It is not a strategy. At first it was bilateral, but it can also be China working with two or more countries and it can also include projects in which China is not involved at all," he says.

"If they want to be involved, Japan can also bid for projects and be part of it. It is a global interconnectivity initiative. China does not have to be involved at all, but it is the country that initiated it. That is all," he says.

Shi Yinhong, director of the Center for American Studies at Renmin University of China and one of China's leading foreign policy experts, says it would simply not work if it was seen as a Chinese geopolitical tool.

"If it was just about China's geopolitical interests, then other members would become suspicious and have their own concerns," he says.

"It is certainly not the message that China wants to put across. China, of course, does have many geopolitical interests but it sees them as entirely separate from this initiative."

With the new US administration having a protectionist agenda, Belt and Road does reaffirm China's commitment to a new form of globalization based on international connectivity.

Sun Yongfu, former director general of the European Department of the Chinese Ministry of Commerce, believes this will be one of the strongest messages from the forum.

"I believe the Chinese government would like to use this platform to send a strong message that China supports globalization," he says.

"China is open to different ideas. It does not just want to put its own ideas forward, but also wants to listen to others. It is about what countries can do in cooperation with each other, jointly, bilaterally and multilaterally."

Wang Huiyao, president and founder of the Center for China & Globalization, China's largest independent think tank, says the forum offers the opportunity for some form of restatement of the importance of globalization.

"It could prove to be the new driving force behind globalization and provide the necessary impetus to stimulate the global economy and provide the economic growth for the future. It has been three years since it was first proposed and now is the right time to get to the nitty gritty."

One of the benefits to China of the Belt and Road Initiative might also be to provide new export markets for its heavy industries that supply the construction sector, now that the Chinese economy is slowing down.

"In that way it is a business initiative," says Shen at Fudan Universty. "Selling cement, iron and steel and overcapacity that we don't need at home. People are losing jobs in China and it is a way for them to continue to be employed."

Tse, also author of China's Disruptors: How Alibaba, Xiaomi, Tencent, and Other Companies Are Changing the Rules of Business, thinks this, however, is far too overplayed.

"There is a lot of business involved, but to equate Belt and Road Initiative as a way for China to export its overcapacity does not make sense economically. You can't really export products like cement. You cannot realistically transport it from Northeast China to Eastern Europe, as just one example. It is a very local business."

Peter Frankopan, director of the Centre for Byzantine Research at Oxford University and author of the best-selling book The Silk Roads, says the initiative has created major interest in the countries that were along the ancient Silk Road.

"Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Russia and the Central Asian republics have all started to think about their economic futures in terms of these connections," he says.

"The reason why there is so much excitement about these routes is because they have existed before. You only have to look back in history to see how all these connections and pathways were made.

"If they have existed before, it can work again. It will lead to a greater level of ease of distributing goods and services along the routes, which will make the whole process cheaper and quicker."

The first rail freight service covering the 12,100 kilometer journey from the DP World London Gateway rail terminal to Yiwu in eastern China started on April 10, and the initiative opens up the prospect of linking Europe through central Asia to China.

Rana Mitter, director of the Dickson Poon China Centre at Oxford University, believes many in Europe now see the potential of these new connections.

"If you look at southern Europe and look at the way Chinese investment in Greece, Bulgaria and Romania is rocketing up, these could be more organically connected by this new initiative. I also think Turkey is also important in all of this," he says.

The China historian and author of China's War with Japan, 1937-1945: The Struggle for Survival, however, believes there is so far less of a realization of the potential benefits in Western Europe.

"If we are talking of the Chancellery in Berlin or the presidential palace in Paris, where there is the distraction of the French election, I think this is the case. There is a certain amount of interest in Brexit Britain about the potential opportunities."

Tse believes Belt and Road offers a real opportunity for the UK after it leaves the European Union.

"The UK will gravitate more toward China, with its relationship with Europe being uncertain. From the Chinese investor standpoint there are a lot of potential deals to be made in the UK. With the lower level of the pound, a lot of potential targets are looking pretty reasonable right now."

Sun, the former Ministry of Commerce European department head, believes many who have signed cooperation agreements will be looking for ideas about their own economic development at the Beijing forum.

"China initially learnt a lot from the developed world in terms of technology, setting up special economic zones in the late 1970s and being open to ideas. It now has 34 years of experience to share with others," he says.

andrewmoody@chinadaily.com.cn