The “Digital Silk Road” in Central Asia

In 2015, the People’s Republic of China proposed the so-called “Digital Silk Road” initiative (DSR) in 2015. The scale of Chinese investment is testament to the government’s immense interest in the project. According to data gathered by the International Institute of Strategic Studies, China is currently participating in digital infrastructure projects in around 80 countries, and has already invested some 79 billion US dollars in DSR schemes worldwide.

China’s „new development model“

With the ‘Dual Circulation Strategy’ (DCS), the government in Beijing has once again thrown a stone into the water to test the effects of the announcement. However, after a few critical articles, the international discussion has remained surprisingly quiet. Yet the deliberations could have far-reaching implications for further globalization and China’s leading role in it.

Newsletter 2/June 2021

CONTENTS: Blog post: ‘Build Back Better World’, the US-copy of BRI / News: European bailout for Montenegro / Call for boycott of Myanmar’s jade industry // Readings: Chinese Foreign Direct Investment in Europe in 2020 / Chinas technological influence in Southeast Asia through the Digital Silk Road / Environmental Authoritarianism: Review of ‘China goes green’ by Yifei Li and Judith Shapiro.

B3W: New Highway to Heaven

The label for the multilateral copy of China’s New Silk Roads recently announced at the G7 summit by U.S. President Biden is gruesome: Build Back Better World, or B3W. As a “values-driven, high-standard, and transparent infrastructure partnership” it is to compete with China’s infrastructure activities. So far, however, B3W is merely an anaemic PR product.

My borrowers, your borrowers

The narrative of Chinese “debt diplomacy” is rather simplistic: Lending by state-owned banks is not transparent, encourages corruption, and serves primarily Chinese corporations, it goes. This would lead inevitably into a debt trap. It appears as if Beijing’s policy is fundamentally different from the practices of international financial institutions, governments of Western industrialized countries or large commercial banks.