Integral to the BRI’s work is the party’s now huge and sophisticated United Front Work Department – Mao Zedong described it one of the party’s three “magic weapons”.
As party insiders confirm, the BRI is aimed at delivering the party’s geo-strategic dominance.
Any signatory had better not recognise Taiwan – or object to events in Hong Kong. But the BRI accreditation process also requires signatories to accept “China’s benevolence” – “harmonious” globalisation that accepts China’s definitions of terrorism, security, human rights and multilateralism.
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The overt quid pro quo is that Chinese civil and military traffic are prioritised in ports and airports, or as People’s Liberation Army Navy sources put it, within the BRI they “meticulously select locations, deploy discreetly, prioritise cooperation and slowly infiltrate”. Signatories to the BRI – most small states in Asia and Africa and even within the EU Italy and Greece – get access to Chinese grants and loans for developing their infrastructure. The BRI is the centrepiece of China’s efforts to reorient the world around the interest of the Chinese Communist party. I knew the way the BRI is characterised as representing a “community of common destiny for humankind” is nothing more than a front for China’s geopolitical aims, but I had not realised the stunning scope and reach of it.
The BRI is well known as President Xi’s signature policy, through which China partners with governments to build and enhance ports and the wider transport infrastructure across Asia and Africa. Multilateralism means states acting in harmony with China and its view that economic development is the alpha and omega of all international purpose – the vision set out in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Human rights should be understood as the people’s collective right for Chinese-style economic and social development. Acts of terrorism include not eating pork or speaking out against one-party “democracy”, as the Uighurs and denizens of Hong Kong are learning. The book spells them out and shows how intent the party is on winning international acceptance for them as vital buttresses to its power. Using whatever lever comes to hand – generously financing a thinktank in Washington, owning a part-share of Rotterdam port, encouraging “friendship” clubs like Britain’s 48 Group Club – it is aiming to create an international soft “discourse” and hard infrastructure that so encircles western power centres that the dominance of the party at home and abroad becomes unchallengeable.Ĭhina, we know, has very different definitions of terrorism, human rights, security and even multilateralism to those accepted internationally. The Chinese Communist party, for which dominating rural China in order to encircle its cities and win the civil war is part of its historic backstory, is now intent on doing the same internationally. T his is a remarkable book with a chilling message.