Covid-19 has created a bumpy ride for Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative in key regions
Covid-19 has derailed significant portions of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), causing a sleuth of delays, renegotiations, and project cancellations (GlobalData, 2020). Most notably it has hit the BRI’s China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) particularly hard with the pandemic creating logistical issues adding to the political unrest which had already stalled the $62 billion project (FM Shakil, 2020). CPEC is arguably the most important BRI project for Beijing, as economically it will ensure Chinese access to ports such as Gwadar near the Persian Gulf, and strategically it will aid in securing domestic stability by creating a Chinese presence, and facilitating increasing accessibility, in the rugged safe spaces which the northern Pakistan border provides to Uighur militants (Jacob Mardell, 2020).
Despite a recent boost to the BRI from the signing of the Regional Economic Comprehensive Partnership, heralded as a coup for Beijing’s economic and geopolitical influence by forging a Chinese-led treaty with 15 other South-East Asian states who together make up 30% of global GDP (Firstpost, 2020), it is likely that the BRI’s wider stalling will continue for some time. As even the successful development of a Covid-19 vaccine will be slow to roll-out among developing nations, like Pakistan, due to their limited cold-chain logistics infrastructure (PB Jayakumar, 2020).
The increased instability Covid-19 generates will lead to bottle-necking and increased costs for BRI projects, and with China’s economy, “by its own standards” at least, having taken a Covid-based hit (Larry Elliot, 2020), domestic investment will take priority and a downscaled BRI is to be expected for some time (Globaldata, 2020). Though with $200 billion spent and BRI investment expected to reach around $1.3 trillion dollars (Andrew Chatzky, 2020), a down-scaling may not in practice result in a noticeable diminishment of Beijing’s current and projected global influence.