China's bungled coronavirus response threatens Belt and Road foreign influence initiative
China’s status as the birthplace of the coronavirus pandemic could turn the public health crisis into a disaster for "Belt and Road," the international infrastructure initiative at the center of the communist power’s foreign policy strategy. “This pandemic is reminding us that connectivity doesn't just carry good and nice things but also illicit and deadly things,” Jonathan Hillman, a senior Asia analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told the Washington Examiner. “The Belt and Road was already shrinking and running into problems in certain places. And, I think this is really going to put the brakes on it.”
That’s a gloomy forecast for Xi Jinping, the Chinese Communist leader who launched the Belt and Road in 2013. American officials warn that the initiative's overseas infrastructure loans are “predatory,” noting that China already has gained sovereignty over a strategically significant foreign port by calling in the debt. China’s cover-up of the coronavirus outbreak, combined with the way Beijing pressured allies to maintain travel ties with China as the crisis raged, could make the Belt and Road Initiative even less attractive. “Instead of Belt and Road, it's Plague and Road,” the American Enterprise Institute’s Michael Rubin told the Washington Examiner. Hubei province is a headwater of the Belt and Road Initiative. The regional government boasts of 40 projects in “countries and regions" involved in Belt and Road’ Initiative,” along with sky-high levels of international travel. “Wuhan, Hubei's capital, boasts 59 international and regional direct air lines by June of 2018, as well as became central China’s unique city giving foreigners direct access without a travel permit or prior notice,” according to the Hubei government.
The new contagion emerged in Wuhan, reportedly as early as November. Italy and Iran reached crisis levels of coronavirus-stricken patients before any other country outside of China. Both countries had joined the Belt and Road Initiative, which reinforced strong preexisting economic ties. “Just as we were able to identify western trade routes because of syphilis, we can now identify just how deep the Chinese trade routes are because of this,” Rubin said.
European Union officials are hesitant to join a diplomatic dispute with China at this point. “We have to try to keep unity here,” Ambassador Stavros Lambrinidis, the European Union’s ambassador to the United States, told reporters last week. “I am concerned that politics in times of crisis can always come in and creep in and play a role. And sometimes that role is not always the best one in terms of ensuring that we can bring our best minds, our best scientists, our best practices together to fight this and our best instincts of solidarity.” Such a cooperative spirit might not save the Belt and Road Initiative, analysts say, given that many of the projects were put on hold when China locked down Hubei province. Furthermore, China uses infrastructure projects as a way to purchase influence while creating jobs for Chinese workers, because Chinese state-owned companies bring in the migrant labor force rather than hire from the local population. And so the Belt and Road Initiative is even more vulnerable to coronavirus setbacks, given the possibility that foreign populations will grow suspicious of the migrant workers. “In some of these places, there is already animosity over large numbers of foreign workers, and that would be true if they were from any country, for any foreign worker,” Hillman said. “Some of the resentment is already there and so you layer this on top of that and that makes it potentially more toxic. And, that is a risk.”
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/defense-national-security/chinas-bungled-coronavirus-response-threatens-belt-and-road-foreign-influence-initiative