Beijing letter: As Xi and Putin walked side by side, they looked every inch the leaders of ‘the other team’

The smartly turned-out sentries from the People’s Armed Police have left their posts on the footbridges of Beijing, the crash barriers are gone from the pavements and the check in the subway has reverted to a limp wave of the security wand. The third Belt and Road Forum, which included delegations from about 150 countries and a few dozen international organisations, was over and the city was back to normal.

Although the forum marked the 10th anniversary of the US$1 trillion Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), it attracted fewer world leaders than in 2017 and 2019. But it ended with a pledge from Xi Jinping of more than US$100 billion for the next wave of infrastructure and connectivity projects with a focus on green development and a new emphasis on transparency and non-corrupt co-operation.

Conceived as a modern version of the ancient Silk Road and maritime routes that linked Asia, Europe and Africa, the BRI has seen China finance massive infrastructure projects around the world, including high-speed railways, ports and energy pipelines. It has also left some countries struggling to service their debts to China, some of which are in the tens of billions of dollars.

Xi suggested that in its next phase the BRI would focus on projects that are “small but smart” rather than on the grand infrastructure projects that were the hallmark of its early years. The United States and the European Union have launched their own rival infrastructure initiatives but China’s foreign minister Wang Yi welcomed the competition.

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“Some people claim that the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment put forth by the United States is targeted against the BRI. Such a view is yet another example of politicising an economic issue. It is short-sighted, negative and will find no global support. One should not politicise everything or succumb to political paranoia. Some say there could be competition between the two initiatives. We, however, would like to view this from a positive angle,” he said.

“Competition should not be about cancelling each other out, but helping each other improve. Maybe countries could have a competition globally about who builds more roads, railways and bridges for developing countries, and who builds more schools, hospitals and sports stadiums for ordinary people in low-income countries. China is confident about how it will perform in such a competition.”

The BRI sits within a nest of Chinese blueprints for a new system of global governance, including the Global Development Initiative, the Global Security Initiative and the Global Civilisation Initiative. Xi speaks of a global community with a shared future but his own statements and Chinese government position papers on the subject remain vague and ambiguous.

What is clear is that China has been shifting its diplomatic focus away from the great powers towards the Global South and Xi’s renewed commitment to the BRI and the recent expansion of the Brics to include six new member states are part of that process. As the US pressures the EU, Japan, South Korea and other allies to join its effort to constrain China economically, Beijing is looking elsewhere for economic partners.

The ambiguity of Xi’s blueprint for global governance may be an advantage in winning the support of developing countries, and part of its appeal lies in the fact that it does not attempt to impose an ideological model on its partners. This is an important departure from the pattern during the cold war, when the strategic competition between the US and the Soviet Union was paired with a global ideological contest between capitalism and state socialism.

Western leaders speak about a struggle between democracy and authoritarianism, and as Xi walked through the Great Hall of the People with Vladimir Putin at his side, they looked every inch the leaders of what Joe Biden might call “the other team”. But while there were a few unsavoury characters in Beijing this week, including the EU’s very own Viktor Orban, the participants at the forum were ideologically diverse.

Most of the governments represented there have links to Washington as well as to Beijing, and they feel free to pick and choose between models of development and governance. But the reluctance of so many of them to fall into line behind the western powers, first over the Ukraine war and now over the conflict between Israel and Hamas, suggests that the rest of the world may have called time on the idea of the West as a vision for all.