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Ed Webb

The Belt and Road Initiative Is a Corruption Bonanza - Foreign Policy - 3 views

foreignpolicy.com/...iative-is-a-corruption-bonanza

China corruption investment FDI OBOR

shared by Ed Webb on 22 Jan 19 - No Cached
  • Many countries that receive BRI investments suffer from high levels of corruption. On the TRACE Bribery Risk Matrix, most rank in the lower 50 percent, and 10 are among the riskiest 25 countries in the world. They often have opaque legislative processes, weak accountability mechanisms, compliant media organizations, and authoritarian governments that don’t permit dissent
  • China, of course, struggles with its own share of corruption. In fact, some of China’s own infrastructural marvels have been built through means that were less than scrupulous. President Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption purges have frozen some of that at home. In its construction projects abroad, however, Beijing’s approach seems to be “whatever works.” In no part of China’s lengthy declaration of the BRI’s principles is any attempt made to discourage corruption. And according to a report by Transparency International, no charges have ever been brought in China against a company, citizen, or resident for corrupt practices committed overseas.
  • While Chinese corruption at home doesn’t threaten to bankrupt the government, Chinese corruption in smaller, poorer countries sometimes does. For some of these countries, China’s BRI project is the biggest infrastructural endeavor they’ve ever attempted—a high-stakes gamble collateralized with mountains of debt. When such projects are approved by local leaders more interested in enriching themselves than in weighing the cost for their country, locals can find themselves crushed beneath the weight of white elephants.
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  • for China, the BRI is as much a foreign-policy instrument—and sometimes a domestic political move—as it is an economic program
  • Sri Lanka, where Hambantota Port was built by China under former President Mahinda Rajapaksa. When Rajapaksa faced an electoral challenge in 2015, money earmarked for the port’s construction somehow found its way into the president’s campaign coffers. In the end, Rajapaksa lost the election, and the port proved so unprofitable that the new government was forced to hand it over to China in a debt-for-equity swap.
  • The relationship between China and corrupt BRI partners is symbiotic and, often, more complex than simple bribery
Ed Webb

Populists Are Tired of the U.S. Being in Charge - 0 views

foreignpolicy.com/...-multipolar-world-russia-china

US USA IR China Russia analysis politics diplomacy polarity pandemics

shared by Ed Webb on 05 Aug 20 - Cached
  • the growing sense that the international order sits at an inflection point, driven by the conspicuous lack of leadership by the Trump administration; China’s aggressive efforts to showcase its domestic political model and its status as a provider of international club and private goods; and the possibility that the pandemic may fuel a growing populist backlash against political, economic, and cultural liberalism.
  • Despite important regional, cultural, and political differences, many contemporary populists embrace multipolarity—an international system composed of multiple great powers rather than one or two superpowers. They do so as a rhetorical aspiration, a vision of a global order that privileges national sovereignty over liberal rights and values, and as a tool to increase their freedom of action by playing alternative suppliers of international club and private goods against one another. Indeed, this multipolar populism is fast becoming a core part of the contemporary populist playbook.
  • Populist rhetoric and policies thus constitute a rejection of important aspects of the post-Cold War liberal order, driven by a mix of ideological and instrumental concerns.
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  • emphasize the overriding importance of some combination of sovereignty, territorial borders, and national identity and culture. They routinely claim that efforts, spearheaded by sinister external forces, to undermine all three constitute an existential threat to the political community
  • in order to implement their policies, populists need to shield themselves from pressure to, variously, protect human rights, maintain the rule of law, combat corruption, and respect domestic pluralism
  • populists in Europe rightly see the liberal values that undergird the EU as an obstacle to their political programs
  • Even as he depends on EU subsidies to maintain his patronage networks, Orban positions himself as defending Hungary against EU efforts to subvert its sovereignty and values.
  • populists have converged on the idea that a multipolar international system will best serve their interests and is therefore something to both welcome and advance
  • Leaders argue that, unlike Western donors, China and other new patrons do not demand intrusive conditions such as economic conditionality or respect for individual rights. However, these deals involve opaque schemes and private payoffs, as well as expectations of future support. Beijing, for example, expects recipients to back its foreign-policy priorities and support—or at least not overtly criticize—China on matters such as respect for human rights in general or its current policies toward Uighurs in Xinjiang in particular.
  • This “goods substitution” is significant on its own terms because the provision of international club and private goods is the main mechanism by which great powers order international politics. But countries such as China and Russia often do not, in fact, provide superior goods and bargains to those offered by the United States and its allies. China’s behavior surrounding the BRI and its preexisting aid programs has led recipients to accuse Beijing of neocolonialism, and growing evidence suggests that Chinese development projects are more problematic than Western ones.
  • A critical part of the domestic politics of goods substitution is that populists claim that their pragmatic courting of illiberal or authoritarian states affords them a wider range of partnerships and international networks. The fact that new partners like China and Russia are authoritarian becomes a net political positive: a signal that populist leaders are pragmatic and committed to protecting national interests—because they are flexible enough to find new partners who can deliver the goods.
  • Leaders, and populists especially, now increasingly see partnership with the United States—once viewed as an indispensable pillar of foreign policy—and its Western allies as overly constraining. For example, Duterte, Erdogan, and Orban all came to power in states that were fully integrated members of the U.S.-led security order. All three now point to potential security relations with Russia and China as providing the possibility of greater balance with, if not outright exit from, that order.
  • The difference now is that elites in multiple, and otherwise very different, countries are actually implementing policies that distance themselves from the U.S.-led security order. In all of these cases, populist leaders are invoking multipolarity as a rhetorical commonplace, taking advantage of the growing shift toward a multipolar order, or both. In doing so, they contribute to a power transition away from the United States by reducing its influence.
  • invoking multipolarity also makes it easier for populists to reject external, mostly Western, criticism of their domestic governance practices. When the West was dominant, even autocrats had to accept significant incursions on their domestic sovereignty—such as critical election monitors, foreign-sponsored NGOs, and members of the Western press. Now, emulating the practices of China and Russia, populists are much more comfortable with banning or repressing these same actors—and in justifying their actions as ways of protecting their national values and interests
  • The global impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, at first glance, strengthens and fuels these dynamics. The closing of borders and the curtailment of international economic exchange increase the appeal of national fortress narratives conjured by populists about the perils of globalism
  • It’s one thing to use exit options to reduce external liberalizing pressure, but it’s another when new patrons start calling in favors. Despite Beijing’s defense of sovereignty as an international principle, its practices toward clients suggest that, eventually, it will use its leverage in ways no less coercive than other great powers. Moscow has already demonstrated its lack of concern for the sovereignty of clients and partners
  • the COVID-19 crisis underscores that international goods provision abhors a vacuum
Ed Webb

Beijing turns table on debt trap diplomacy claims | Article | Africa Confidential - 1 views

www.africa-confidential.com/..._on_debt_trap_diplomacy_claims

China Africa debt US USA EU Ethiopia AU OBOR BRI climate development

shared by Ed Webb on 19 Jan 23 - No Cached
  • Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang's remarks that multilateral lenders and commercial creditors should carry the biggest blame for the debt distress of some African states comes as a thinly veiled retort to western critics who accuse China of 'debt trap' diplomacy
  • While the US and European Union will not attempt to match the size of Beijing's infrastructure investment in Africa, they are attempting to ramp up their diplomatic and economic relations in Africa, anxious to avoid losing more ground to China.
  • 'Africa should be a big stage for international cooperation, not an arena for major countries' competition', said Qin, at a joint press conference with African Union Commission chairman Moussa Faki Mahamat at the new headquarters of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention in Addis Ababa, financed by China.
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  • Financial experts interpreted Qin's inclusion of Angola, Benin and Gabon on his itinerary as a signal that Beijing's harbours plans to expand its Belt and Road infrastructure projects into West and Central Africa.
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