Читать книгу Economic corridors in Asia : paradigm of integration? A reflection for Latin America - Varios autores - Страница 14

Alexander Arciniegas, research professor of the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Santander in Colombia, opens this selection of chapters with an historical overview of the political and economic ascent of Communist China to enable the non-specialist reader to contextualize the phenomenon, and understand its geopolitical dimension. Arciniegas describes the China BRI Initiative, in order to evidence this country’s desire to lead the transformation of the international order and influence the balance of power in its natural arena of Central Asia and South Asia where India has been the natural hegemon.

Pankaj K Jha, associate professor of strategic defense at Jindal Global University in New Delhi, has a chapter on “India’s Economic Corridors and Sub-Regional Connectivity Challenges and Prospects”. Here he deals with the evolution of economic corridors in India as a State decision and a national connectivity strategy and the inclusion of the majority in the last decade. Why must the largest democracy in the world focus its efforts on overcoming the functional infrastructure deficit? This question forms the crux of his analysis. After dwelling on the different theoretical perspectives, he calls attention to the industrial development and social inclusion aspirations of the only country in the region which can serve as a counterweight to Chinese aspirations. Jha presents an India in the throes of a complete physical and productive transformation heretofore unknown in the West. He analyses the challenges that have been met through the main megaprojects in the country, road networks such as the Golden Triangle and those that link the four cardinal points of the Indian subcontinent and join the traditional economic centres with those that are new. He presents the Sagarmala project that has advanced with the development of maritime coasts and the modernization of port infrastructure and writes about the construction of rail corridors exclusively to transport cargo adding to riverine connectivity. These stakes in infrastructure, despite the difficulties in terms of implementation and development of adjacent areas, pay dividends in the national and subregional ambits. The connectivity inside the land mass territory of India connects its neighbours to the Indian Ocean and also favors the SAARC group of countries, even as it strengthens India’s position in the deepening of initiatives like the India-Mekong economic corridor, the Indo-Pacific initiative, and those that join Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal and China (BBIN) and (BCIN).

In the chapter “Chinese Capital Flows to Africa in a Context of the Silk Road”, Alicia Girón, researcher at the Autonomous University of Mexico, concentrates on Africa and through the capital accumulation theory explains the behaviour of Chinese Banks and the expansion of companies in this region. She presents the effects of the growing indebtedness of the beneficiary African states and the risks that other economies can also prevent if they decide to be part of the BRI initiative. The arguments refer to China’s ability during the 2008 crisis to configure propitious scenarios for the exit of financial corporations from their territory and their metamorphosis into global companies at a time when the international economy was being transformed and a “capitalist model that administered money” today perceived as a parallel financial system was being strongly leveraged but not regulated. By reworking Rosa Luxemburg’s thesis, Alicia Girón looks for the signs of what could be a new cycle of neocolonial domination. The growing Chinese presence in Africa after the fall of the Wall and its entry in the WTO is consolidated with BRI. China, a market economy controlled by the State manages to introduce structural transformations in the geography, political economy and the interests of beneficiary countries in its financial and cooperation projects. Most of the African debt is private and repayment is also ensured through the barter system, a mechanism which acts a counter guarantee based on the supply of raw materials, a costly and subordinated mechanism, dangerous for vulnerable nations.

Jerónimo Delgado also devotes a chapter to Africa in this book. In the joint paper written with Juliana Andrea Guzmán Cárdenas, “Development Corridors in Africa: Foreign Policy and Regional Integration Strategies in the Global South”, the authors put forward various objectives: 1) understanding the meaning of the category development corridors. 2) Analysing the role of these new routes in the African Union through examples that illustrate and give information about connecting megaprojects effective for a few years now to connect African peoples with the ports as well as with the centre and south of the continent. 3) Laying down the challenges that these initiatives encounter in the region especially those related to security and indebtedness. The authors seek to demonstrate how the corridors in Africa have been used by China, India, Japan as a strategy of foreign policy and as a diplomatic tool that serves their interests, even as the people of the African Union employ them as an instrument of continental integration of connectivity and development. Throughout the analysis they use literature which privileges the African continent and this gives the publication an important added value and the reader thus benefits from little known sources of information and analysis.

Ahmad Saffee uses the discourse method of analysis in order to make a narrative around organisms which greatly influenced public opinion, such as think tanks and communication networks around the China-Pakistan (CPEC) economic corridor, the BRI project with the greatest scope in the Eurasia region. For this, he analyses the role of ISSI (Strategic Studies Institute in Islamabad), a highly influential nonprofit institution created in 1973, instrumental in the making of opinion in the country and in the region on sensitive subjects such as regional security, terrorism, conflict resolution, migrations and functional connectivity. The geoeconomic and geostrategic impact of (CPEC) have strong repercussions on Pakistan and its neighbours and for this reason, the Centre has become a storehouse of information for its academic activity, dissemination, debate and research about thought and opinion building on economic corridors and the leadership of China in its implementation from 2013 till 2018. The results of the quantitative and qualitative analysis are an important reference point for Latin America, a late entrant in the debate, in order that it also know first-hand the way in which Chinese intelligence approaches the regions it deems strategic, the construction of an overarching discourse, the prioritization of Chinese and local interests, the prevailing concerns about public opinion and the various projects to overcome the socio-economic impact of BRI in their country. “China-Pakistan Economic Corridor: A Critical Discourse Analysis: Mapping Public Discourse in Pakistan: The Case Study of Institute of Strategic Studies”, is a valuable effort by the researcher in constructing benchmarks and deciphering the trends in the new integrationist narratives.

In their chapter “Resurgence of South-South Cooperation and China’s Belt and Road Initiative in Asia and Latin America”, Ume Farwa and Ghazanfar Ali Garewal construct a narrative based on Chinese and Pakistani institutional reports, discourses of regional leaders, opinion articles and on discussions during academic seminars, in which the participants are those who decide on the formation of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and promote the think tanks to which the authors are affiliated, a fact that allows them to measure the tenor of the debate in Pakistan. The article analyses the flagship project of the BRI initiative, the China-Pakistan economic corridor and its impact on the much longed for resurgence of a real South-South cooperation, which according to the authors should function within its own conceptual framework, in a spirit of sustainable cooperation in order to achieve national commitment and interinstitutional cooperation of the countries involved and the assurances of a wide and diverse financing at the global, regional and subregional levels.

In his chapter, “Latin America Infrastructure Gap and the Arrival of Chinese Infrastructure Firms: Special Reference to the Argentina Case”, Leonardo E. Stanley, an economist and research associate of the Centre for the Study of State and Society (CEDES), makes a detailed analysis on the manner in which China approached Latin America as part of its politics of internationalisation (go out) of public and private enterprises in a political scenario which allowed it to leverage the consequences of the extended corruption in the continent, the political and financial instability that affected certain countries in the region as well as the institutional vacuum caused by government indifference, international banks and the private sector in the midst of the evident backwardness of infrastructure and functional connectivity. The researcher takes recourse to relevant primary sources (reports of multilateral agencies, governments, discourses of political leaders, statistics, and experts’ analysis in order to explain the vectors and incentives that enter the reckoning of the government and Chinese companies to make Latin America a strategic partner), to explain the nature of Chinese companies and their particular forms of financing and the way in which they adapt to the business environment of the region.

Paraguayan researcher Gustavo Cardozo, in his chapter “El Mercosur en la búsqueda de Asia Pacífico”, (Mercosur in the Search for the Asia Pacific), Paraguayan researcher Gustavo Cardozo uses a regional South American approach. He views the China BRI project in the framework of a clearer connection between the Pacific Alliance (PA) and the Common Market of the South (Mercosur) as they are apt zones for the development of bioceanic corridors and for their relevance and potential in port and logistical matters necessary for strategic sectors such as mining. There are hardly any studies on the Chinese phenomenon and its presence in South America from a regional perspective, and so Cardoso uses studies and primary source information for this analysis produced by these two regional authorities as well as analysis done by multilateral bodies.

Kelly Arévalo, a Colombian researcher affiliated to the Centre of Studies on Contemporary India of the Externado University of Colombia (CESICAM), writes on the “Del fortalecimiento de las fronteras a la conectividad: lecciones para el Sur de Asia y América del Sur” (Strengthening of the Borders to Connectivity: Lessons for South Asia and South America), a comparative analysis in which she privileges the discipline of geography, which leads us to interpret the territory and functional geography as that which explains the new dynamics of interdependence, economic development, regional integration and the exercise of power. From the geographical space of South Asia, she highlights the limitations in connectivity and the consequences on trade and regional cohesion, the development possibilities that can open up corridors identified by regional groups such as SAARC more than a decade ago and India’s responsibility in overcoming these obstacles. For South America, Arevalo presents a similar situation: a precarious physical connectivity, unfinished projects, a weakening of regional structures which result in a slow internationalization, a marginalization of global supply chains and a slow rhythm movement in social cohesion.

Pío García, researcher and professor at the Externado University of Colombia takes a regional, multipolar and critical approach to the phenomenon of the economic corridors in South East Asia. Through an analysis of recent geopolitical history, he explains how the connectivity strategy of the region is also influenced by players different from China, especially India and Japan, nations which have different infrastructure solutions and which besides facilitating the interconnectivity in the region, also introduce a balance of power. In his article “El sudeste asiático en las nuevas rutas transcontinentales: Asean” (South East Asia in the New Transcontinental Routes: ASEAN), García searches for answers to the impact that the two flagship projects of different scope and philosophies, BRI and the Asia-Africa Growth Corridor –AAGC, will have on the capacity of building consensus and in the centrality of decisions within ASEAN. Before giving us an informative analysis on the evolution of the grouping and its influence in the rise of other trans Asian initiatives, such as the Trans Pacific Association TPP and its updated version CPATPP, he refers to the forms of insertion of the South East Asian countries in the different mechanisms of cooperation. They are shown as not just searching for benefits in the field of physical connectivity, but also in the productive, social and environmental dynamics. According to García, although Latin America plays a strategic role as a provider of raw materials to China and emergent Asia, its States have lost the capacity to act in a unified manner in regional fora, its groups no longer have the ability to negotiate and are institutionally weak.

With a regional vision, but this time from Central Asia, Azhar Serikkaliyeva, in his chapter “The Role of the Central Asian Region in China’s New Silk Road Economic Belt Project, the Case of Kazakhstan”, analyses how China strategically constructs segmented dynamics in foreign policy, apparent in the diplomatic orientation called “Two Fronts and a Circle” that divides relations with great and emergent powers, as opposed to those that should be constructed in the framework of a peripheral diplomacy. BRI aims to build bridges with developing countries, above all those at the borders and which are strategic for its connectivity objectives. Other regional bodies like the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) created to counter Chinese influence finally engaged with the BRI initiative believing it to be the best option for regional development. The strategic subjects relating to China and its neighbours, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, which together with India and Pakistan are part of the Shanghai Cooperation Council (SCO), all engaged at some point of time with the definition of borders and once this was achieved, they have been ensuring strategies that guarantee national security, the supply of natural resources, especially through energy and gas corridors in the region, counter terrorism and the development of trade infrastructure so as to make of Central Asia a logistical bridge that joins China with Europe. The author mainly uses official sources of regional institutions, reports by international bodies as well as studies by Eurasian authours who specialize in the subject.

Gökhan Tekir is a Turkish researcher at the Middle East Technical University METU, from Smyrna, one of the most liberal regions of the Anatolian peninsula. His vision on the strategic albeit sensitive role of Turkey in the successful implementation of the China initiative (BRI) is presented through a geopolitical analysis with the title “Turkey and the Belt and Road Initiative”. The author focuses on how his country’s relation with China affects political stability, and he takes as his reference point one segment of the six transport routes proposed by China for crossing Central Asia. This is the one that avoids the Russian pass on the stretch that joins Baku in Azerbaijan with Tbilisi in Georgia and Kars in the east of Turkey (BTK). The author shows how Turkey’s decision to join BRI is compatible with the infrastructure and connectivity plans which the Turkish government has been putting into effect for more than a decade now. Turkey is the last port of call in Asia in order to reach Europe, and the megaprojects of rail and road transport on land and sea have to go through Istanbul. Modern infrastructure works are being built in the peninsula of Asia Minor and in the Bosphorus. In contrast to other countries within BRI, the Turkish private sector has an important participation in the construction, management and administration of projects as well as in the national banking system. Tekir’s analysis in chapter 12 studies the political risks inside the Turkish nation. Although Turkey’s close cultural and economic ties with the Turk people of Central Asia (who have the same Altaic linguistic roots), guarantees the acceptance of the Chinese presence throughout the region, the plight of the Chinese Muslims is a matter of grave concern to the Turkish side. The government’s closeness to China after the coup attempt against it in 2016, is the subject of intense debates inside political parties and also affects the relations of the government and business community.

In contrast to Azhar Serikkaliyeva’s regional focus in chapter 11 on BRI and Central Asia, Diana Andrea Gómez, researcher at the Institute of Political Studies and International Relations (IEPRI) National University of Colombia in her piece “Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) the Cities and their Geopolitical Significance”, refers to the initiative as essentially a foreign policy strategy which will benefit the backward regions of East China. The national objectives of development, internationalization and security are reflected in the foreign policy of the country that geostrategically elevate border relations to the same status as the relations with the United States. Diplomacy of the periphery, active development policies, Go West, energy diplomacy are some of the policies that have received a boost through BRI. The cities in this new geography play a fundamental role in the development of connection axes, consumers of goods such as energy resource products all of which favors regional stability.