China’s Belt and Road Initiative: Challenges and difficulties in its implementation

Abstract

Having had a successful start in 2013–2015, China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has so far lost some momentum and has not yet been able to achieve the great scope initially declared by the Chinese leadership. Contrary to claims from the Chinese side that the BRI is a global and large-scale initiative, a tendency is now developing to localize it in a limited circle of priority countries. Even in the priority countries, the initiative has not been developing flawlessly. The purpose of this article is to identify and characterize the main challenges and difficulties facing the BRI. A serious challenge to the Chinese plans to turn RRI into a global initiative has been a wary reaction to it from a number of leading countries. The first section of the article analyzes the criticism coming from the BRI’s opponents, as well as various forms of opposition and countermeasures to the Chinese initiative from liberal democracies. The second section of the article focuses on the study of challenges such as Sinophobia, altering attitudes towards Chinese projects due to the change of political elites in the BRI countries, intensifying demands in the BRI countries to meet environmental and labor standards, and also taking into account the interests of local communities in the implementation of Chinese projects. The practice of revising the financing conditions for Chinese projects or completely abandoning their implementation has become widespread among the BRI countries. The third section of the article reveals the urgent need for Beijing to comprehensively assess financial and credit risks for both the recipient countries and China when investing and lending to the BRI countries in the face of growing and deepening problems in the Chinese economy. The challenges and difficulties that have emerged along the path of the BRI make it necessary to change China’s approaches to its implementation, including in the areas of project development and financing.