China has used the third Belt and Road Forum (BRF) organised in Beijing early last week to mark the first 10 years of the launch of its transactional Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) project to tweak and re-energise this multi-trillion-dollar programme for broader global collaboration.

The changes in the BRI framework announced at the forum show signs of China’s shifting strategy going forward by addressing whatever concerns China critics and partner countries may have.

In his speech titled “Building an Open, Inclusive and Interconnected World For Common Development”, at the opening of the forum, President Xi Jinping pushed to make BRI smarter and greener and move from big-ticket projects to high-tech ones such as digital finance and e-commerce platforms.

President Xi outlined expansive plans for the next phase of BRI, a pioneering global undertaking to boost connectivity and trade across the world through infrastructure development with Chinese money and know-how.

He also spoke about BRI’s successes in the past decade, saying it has progressed from “sketching the outline” to “filling in the details” and added that the future of the initiative will be led by “small yet smart” projects and the “principles of green, transparent and non-corrupt cooperation”.

However, big, signature infrastructure projects will also remain part of the larger plan — albeit at a lesser scale than in previous years.

There has been a shift in focus from big-ticket infrastructure projects to small smart ones such as e-commerce

The objective of President Xi’s renewed push remains the same: a broader thrust for a multipolar world order that gives the global South more power than the one dominated by the US and its allies.

Thus, he declared that the BRI initiative, which has faced headwinds in the recent past due to the pandemic, slow economic growth, Sino-American political and trade tensions, the Ukraine crisis and the like, is on the “right side of history”.

“We have drawn a blueprint for the great cause, and we need to implement it thoroughly. China is willing to deepen its partnership with Belt and Road cooperation partners, promote Belt and Road cooperation to a new stage of high-quality development and make unremitting efforts to achieve modernisation of countries worldwide,” he said, announcing that China will funnel nearly $100 billion into its state banks to fund the next phase of BRI.

The China Development Bank and the Export-Import Bank of China will each set up a CN¥350bn financing window. An additional CN¥80bn will be injected into the Silk Road Fund.

Cooperation agreements worth $97.2bn have also been concluded at the CEO Conference held during this forum. The CEOs were from various industries, including infrastructure, clean energy, artificial intelligence, biopharmaceuticals, financial services, modern agriculture and rail transportation, according to Chinese media.

The number of projects, the countries involved, and the total value of deals significantly surpassed the previous forum, which was held in Beijing in 2019, Yu Jianlong, vice chairman of the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade, one of the organisers of the CEO Conference, was quoted as saying.

“This reflects the fruitful results of the international cooperation between Chinese and foreign business communities under the BRI framework and demonstrates the confidence and resolve of business communities to continue contributing to high-quality BRI development,” Yu said.

In all, President Xi announced eight major steps China will take to support high-quality Belt and Road cooperation:

1. Build a multidimensional Belt and Road connectivity network

2. Support an open world economy

3. Carry out practical cooperation

4. Promote green development

5. Advanced scientific and technological innovation

6. Encourage people-to-people exchanges

7. Promote integrity-based Belt and Road cooperation

8. Strengthen institutional building for international Belt and Road cooperation.

Unlike the past two forums, last week’s BRF event also has political significance as it was organised amid growing Western propaganda that BRI has run into serious problems and, as former Pakistani prime minister Shehbaz Sharif said, is held at a delicate time in international relations.

The forum reasserted China’s determination to continue to pursue it. As its white paper states: “China will continue to promote BRI as its overarching plan and its top-level design for opening up and win-win international cooperation.”

The participation of 151 countries, 41 international organisations, and more than 10,000 delegates at the forum shows BRI’s appeal and global influence. According to China’s first-ever white paper on BRI, released just prior to the forum, Beijing has signed more than 200 agreements with more than 150 countries and 30 international organisations across five continents.

“As geostrategic conflicts, particularly in the Middle East, are injecting uncertainty in the global order, the message from the BRI Forum is one of cooperation over confrontation, and economic integration over decoupling,” Mr Sharif wrote on X (formerly Twitter).

If nothing else, BRI has greatly pushed forward global awareness about the infrastructure deficits across the countries, especially in developing economies. This forces developed nations to announce their own plans to fill infrastructure gaps.

The US, which sees BRI as a tool for Beijing to extend its global political and economic influence, has planned investments to boost global infrastructure development. In June last year, the advanced economies forming the Group of Seven promised $600bn in investment by 2027 to deliver projects to close the infrastructure gaps between countries.

Last month, the US, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, France, Germany, Italy and the European Union announced their own plan to link Europe, the Middle East and Asia by rail.

There’s no second-guessing BRI’s enormous potential. Pakistan has benefited a lot from the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), the flagship project of BRI that has seen Chinese firms invest over $25bn in energy and transport schemes since 2015.

However, no meaningful progress has been made in the areas of bilateral cooperation in industry and agriculture, which is crucial for boosting Pakistan’s economic productivity and increasing exports from the country to overcome its perpetual balance of payments troubles and long-term and sustainable growth.

Beijing’s renewed push for BRI is a good omen for Pakistan to expand economic ties with China beyond energy and transport schemes. Indeed, infrastructure is crucial to trade development and economic growth, but Pakistan needs to increase productivity and exports by attracting foreign investment and technology transfer.

In the past, bilateral cooperation in these important areas was hampered by multiple factors. Therefore, it is encouraging to note here that multiple agreements have been reached between the two countries to expand CPEC’s scope, and expand bilateral economic and investment cooperation to industry, mining, agriculture, livelihood projects, science and technology, education, etc.

Beijing has also agreed to finance and upgrade the rail track from Peshawar to Karachi at the reduced cost of $6.7bn and to invest $1.5bn in Pakistan Refinery. The question is: is Pakistan ready to seize the new opportunity to fully realise the potential of cooperation with Beijing under CPEC to develop a green, open and inclusive economy under the new BRI vision?

Published in Dawn, The Business and Finance Weekly, October 23rd, 2023