Publications /
Policy Paper

Back
The Belt and Road turns five
Authors
Michael Baltensperger
January 13, 2019

China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is an international trade and development strategy. Launched in 2013, it is one of the ways China asserts its role in world affairs and captures the opportunities of globalisation. The BRI has the potential to enhance development prospects across the world and in China, but that potential might not be realised because the BRI’s objectives are too broad and ill-defined, and its execution is too often non-transparent, lacking in due diligence and uncoordinated.

Originally published by Bruegel, the Belgium-based think-tank and partner of Policy Center for the New South, this Policy Contribution offers a reflection by Michael Baltensperger and Uri Dadush on China’s Belt and Road Initiative, five years after its launch. 

RELATED CONTENT

  • August 1, 2018
    “This article has been originally published in 'Morocco in Focus 2018,' the magazine of the Moroccan Embassy in New Delhi, India on the occasion of the Morocco National Day 2018.” Introduction In an article published last year, the author stressed the role of partnership between Morocco and India for the inclusive growth of small farmers. There is no doubt that agriculture remains a major instrument for human development both in India and in Africa. Several international reports h ...
  • Authors
    July 10, 2018
    Historians often offer different interpretations of the events that have shaped our destiny, yet, with respect to World War 2, the bloodiest conflict in history, they seem to concur on two points. First, that those yearning for peace underestimated the National Socialists’ determination to wage a war of conquest until it was far too late to deter them, and, second, that Nazi Germany failed to anticipate that Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union – each of which it provok ...
  • Authors
    June 6, 2018
    The spike in US bond yields since mid-April in tandem with the strengthening of the dollar sparked a retrenchment of capital flows to emerging markets (EM), accompanied by a sell-off of assets in some cases. Argentina and Turkey suffered from strong and potentially disruptive exchange rate depreciation pressures in May, with financial markets calming down only after bold domestic policy moves (interest rate hikes in both countries and, in the case of Argentina, a decision to seek a ...
  • Authors
    May 15, 2018
    Technology and inequality, China's special status, macroeconomic imbalances, and WTO dysfunction, are the challenges confronted by the world trading system, and which lie at the root of resurgent protectionism. Are the trade tensions that have been stoked by Trump unique to him or the outcome of forces that preceded him and will outlast him? ...
  • Authors
    April 16, 2018
    The launch of an oil futures contract on the Shanghai International Energy Exchange (INE) cannot be merely seen as a “technical” or secondary event, as it foreshadows what global commodities markets will become in a few years. The Shanghai Futures Exchange (SHFE) and the Dalian Commodity Exchange (DCE) have, indeed, seen their trading volumes increase significantly over the past decade thanks to steel and iron ore, which could suggest that the move is, in fact, not that unprecedente ...
  • Authors
    April 10, 2018
    Le lancement d’un contrat à terme pétrolier sur le Shanghai International Energy Exchange (INE) ne saurait être vu comme un évènement « technique » ou secondaire tant il préfigure ce que seront dans quelques années les marchés mondiaux de matières premières. Le Shanghai Futures Exchange (SHFE) et le Dalian Commodity Exchange (DCE) ont certes vu leurs volumes de trading augmenter considérablement sur la dernière décennie grâce à l’acier et au minerai de fer, ce qui pourrait laisser à ...
  • February 21, 2018
    تعتبر 2018 بلا شك نقطة تحول في تطور الاقتصاد العالمي. أوروبا، بعد أن بدأت في الخروج من الأزمة في عام 2017 ، من المرجح أن تدخل مرحلة نمو قوي ومستدام بفضل الزيادة الهيكلية في الإنت°اج الصناعي، إضافة الى الانعكاسات الإيجابي°ة للمشروع الإصلاحي المؤيد لأوروبا موحدة الذي يحمله الثن°ائي الفرنسي الألماني. كما ان آسيا تستمر في تأكيد مكانتها كمحرك رئيسي للاقتصاد العالمي، حيث اصبحت ثلاثة بلدان من اسيا )الصين واليابان والهند( تنتمي لقائمة أكبر خمسة اقتصادات عالمية في عام 2018 . هذه التطورات تدف ...
  • Authors
    November 27, 2017
    Current technological developments in manufacturing are likely to lead to a partial reversal of the wave of fragmentation and global value chains that was at the core of the rise of North-South trade from 1990 onwards. At the same time, China – the main hub of the global-growth-cum-structural-change of that period - may attempt to extend the previous wave through its “One Belt, One Road” initiative. ...
  • Authors
    Silvia Colombo
    Mohamed El Harrak
    Nicolò Sartori
    May 27, 2016
    Energy is at the core of the remarkable current transitions in the global economy and geopolitics, and natural gas plays a crucial role in these processes. In this context of rapidly evolving trends at the market level and developing dynamics between regional and global actors, The Future of Natural Gas aims at analysing the role of natural gas in the future energy mix by considering several key factors: the ambitious climate policies agreed by the international community, cost issu ...
  • March 17, 2016
    Jointly organized by OCP Policy Center and Shanghai Institutes for International Studies, the roundtable on "Current African Economic and Strategic Challenges and Opportunities; Intersecting Views from China and Morocco" was a great opportunity to gather experts from both side, to brainstorm opportunities to enhance the role of think-tanks and civil society organization in the consolidation of the Afro-Asian cooperation more efficiently and in a more comprehensive way. The seminar ...