China Bolsters Global South Relations and Deepens Ties with Russia at Belt and Road Summit
As Xi’s relations with the West cool, development drive forum prioritizes support for economically disadvantaged nations.
![China Bolsters Global South Relations and Deepens Ties with Russia at Belt and Road Summit](https://learnonlineschool.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/image-102.png)
Xi Jinping aims to advance China and Russia’s ‘multipolar’ perspective through the forum and that’s why China bolsters global South relations.
China Bolsters Global South Relations
China seeks closer ties with the Global South and extends an olive branch to Putin at the Belt and Road Summit in Beijing. The international development forum emphasizes support for less affluent nations, while President Xi Jinping shifts his focus due to deteriorating relations with Western powers.
Prominent world leaders have convened in Beijing to participate in the third installment of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) forum, a global development project initiated by President Xi Jinping a decade ago.
Initially conceived as an extensive project to create physical and digital infrastructure linking China with regions including Central Asia, Southeast Asia, Europe, and beyond, the BRI has evolved into a colossal infrastructure financing mechanism, offering significant support to projects worldwide, especially in underdeveloped regions of the Global South. As this support increased, so did China’s influence on the global stage, even as Western countries grew more skeptical of the BRI.
The BRI summit, which commences on Tuesday and is one of the largest international conferences held since China shifted from its zero-Covid policy and reopened its borders at the end of the previous year, is noteworthy not only for its attendees but also for those who are absent.
Among the 130-plus nations participating in the two-day summit, the European Union will be represented primarily by Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s Prime Minister, who is notably more supportive of China than many other leaders within the bloc.
Analysts observe President Xi Jinping’s renewed emphasis on building stronger ties with the Global South, particularly as relations with Western nations continue to deteriorate.
Noteworthy figures attending the summit include Russian President Vladimir Putin and a representative from the Taliban. Putin’s visit to Beijing marks his first international trip since the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for him in March. The ICC’s warrant compels its 123 member states to arrest Putin and extradite him to The Hague for trial if he enters their territory. Notably, China is not a member of the ICC.
![China Bolsters Global South Relations and Deepens Ties with Russia at Belt and Road Summit](https://learnonlineschool.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/image-103.png)
The invitation extended to Putin for Xi’s flagship summit can be seen as an exclusionary gesture towards Western governments and organizations, as pointed out by Christoph Nedopil Wang, Director of the Griffith Asia Institute. This move underscores the alignment of Chinese and Russian political priorities, even as Beijing attempts to position itself as a mediator in the Ukraine conflict.
Russia has similarly taken steps to strengthen ties with China. On Monday, it announced its collaboration with China in restricting imports of Japanese seafood, citing concerns about contamination linked to the release of wastewater from the Fukushima nuclear plant. Some analysts argue that these restrictions may be more politically motivated than driven by safety concerns.
Despite the fact that Russia has not officially joined the initiative, Putin’s presence at the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) emphasizes the close relationship between the two nations. Xi aims to utilize this forum to promote a “multipolar” worldview, which, he contends, empowers the Global South. However, the offer is increasingly a political one, as the available and desired financing through the BRI has diminished.
Recent research from Boston University reveals that while China’s development finance institutions provided approximately $331 billion to recipient countries between 2013 and 2021, “many recipients of Chinese finance are grappling with significant debt distress.” China has also invested around $240 billion in bailing out countries facing difficulties with their BRI-related debts, according to separate research published earlier this year.
BRI financing has shifted its focus towards smaller projects with specific social or political objectives, according to Linda Calabrese, a research fellow at ODI, a global affairs think tank. This shift is also influenced by borrowers who are increasingly wary of ending up in situations with unmanageable debt burdens or infrastructure projects.
This marks a notable departure from the early days of the BRI’s launch in 2013, when Xi, newly installed as China’s leader, appeared to be a rising global force. Beijing had pledged to support countries that traditional multilateral lenders had not served.
However, a series of events, including a trade war with the US, Russia’s conflict in Ukraine, the global pandemic, and China’s slowing economic growth, have hindered China’s development aspirations. Although China’s foreign ministry claims that about $1 trillion of investment has been mobilized under the BRI, lending volumes to poorer countries reached their peak several years ago.
At the UN General Assembly last year, Xi introduced the concept of a Global Development Initiative (GDI), which is China’s new development approach aligned with the UN’s sustainable development goals. This shift has sharpened the BRI’s focus, rendering it a more commercially-oriented initiative compared to the more traditional development-focused GDI, as explained by Nedopil-Wang.
Beijing is actively pursuing a shift from quantity to quality in its overseas lending and investments. In a recent white paper, the Chinese government outlined that the “ultimate goal of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is to help build a global community of shared future.” This entails a focus on critical issues like food security, infectious diseases, artificial intelligence, and climate change, as emphasized in the white paper, rather than solely concentrating on economic development.
The white paper advocates for “high-quality growth,” reflecting a term that has also been central to China’s domestic economic policy. In recent months, Beijing has made efforts to position itself as a member of the Global South, despite its status as the world’s second-largest economy, rivaled only by the United States on the global stage.
Sustaining China’s alignment with the Global South in terms of pure economic development might prove challenging, given China’s rapid transformation from a low-income country to an upper-middle-income country. However, at this week’s BRI forum, where there is a strong emphasis on the Global South, Beijing aims to convey that its offerings to the Global South remain more appealing than those from Brussels or Washington.