Chapter 07 One Belt One Road And Aborted Projects (2)

The Chinese Communist Party signed a $20 billion East China Sea high-speed rail project with Malaysia. In 2019, the new Prime Minister Mahathir re-evaluated the project when he came to power. He intentionally wanted to dismiss the high-speed rail project. China pleaded repeatedly to lower the price to $11 billion before Malaysia reluctantly agreed to keep the project and restart construction. With such a low price, the Chinese side is destined to suffer serious losses. The chairman of China Railway Corporation also admitted that the Moroccan high-speed rail project and the Polish highway project are also huge loss-making projects. Xi Jinping only wants his “red empire” to take root and establish bases in various countries in line with his grand international strategy for which he is willing to lose money. Xi has thus put the economy second to his political ambition.

Xi Jinping invested $50 billion in loans in Venezuela. He was on hot terms with his leftist president, Chavez. Chavez was forced out of office amid popular opposition at home, leaving Xi’s investment a bad debt and it is not known at all how much he will recover. Xi Jinping has also invested $50 billion in the “China-Pakistan Corridor,” a plan to build a China-Pakistan railroad through the mountains and no-man’s land to open up a direct land route for oil imports from Pakistani ports. The project is unprecedentedly difficult and it is not known whether it can be realized or become a bad deal.

The Center for Global Development in Washington, D.C., has published a report in 2018 saying that 23 of the 68 countries participating in China’s Belt and Road projects are highly indebted. Another eight countries are at risk of high project debt.

January 17, 2019 Another anti-China demonstration happened in Kyrgyzstan where hundreds of demonstrators marched to demand the deportation of Chinese, opposed Chinese debt and thoroughly investigated the collapse of a Chinese-maintained power plant. Further, in September 2019 Anti-Chinese demonstrations broke out in several places in Kazakhstan against the Belt and Road where demonstrators protested that the Belt and Road had plunged Kazakhstan into a debt crisis. On March 27, 2021, another 300 people held a rally in front of the Kazakh National Academy of Sciences to protest Chinese migration and expansion in Kazakhstan and called on the government to restrict China’s rights in Kazakhstan.

In April 2020, John Magufuli, the President of Tanzania in Africa, said that Tanzania would withdraw from the Belt and Road, pointing to the former president’s agreement with China for the construction of the port, during which Tanzania had no right to have any input into the port, saying that “only a drunk would accept such a clause”.

A July 2017 investigation by the Financial Times found that 18 high-speed rail projects worth $143 billion were secured by China, but five, worth $47.5 billion, were later canceled. Xi Jinping also plans to build the 100-kilometer Grand Clarion Canal in Peninsular Malaysia connecting the Indian Ocean to the South China Sea with an investment of $25 billion. He also wants to build a 300-kilometer Grand Canal in Nicaragua, USA, with an investment of $50 billion, which can replace the US-controlled Panama Canal. This is his grand strategy to compete with the United States for supremacy

The Belt and Road is Xi Jinping’s path to establishing a global empire. He wants to invest to manipulate many countries and export the “China model” of corruption and authoritarian surveillance to achieve his ambition of world domination.