This document summarizes China's economic expansion and the Belt and Road Initiative's geopolitical impact. It notes that China has grown from a $1 trillion economy in 1986 to $15 trillion in 2020. Through BRI, China has invested heavily in infrastructure projects across 72 countries, particularly port cities, to absorb resources and engage its labor force abroad. While BRI connections could boost regional growth, there are also risks of debt traps and impacts on national sovereignty that recipient countries must carefully negotiate. Overall, the document examines both the opportunities and challenges of China's expanding economic influence through initiatives like BRI.

1. The Geopolitical
Consequences of
China’s Expansion
and Economic
Power:
Impact on the Asia
Pacific Region
Dr. Jebamalai Vinanchiarachi
Principal Adviser, Knowledge
Management Associates, Austria
Former Principal Adviser to the Director
General of United Nations Industrial
Development Organization, Austria

2. The
systematic
rise of China
• From $ 1 trillion in 1986 to
around $15 trillion economy
in 2020
• Dramatic structural change
within the economy and
manufacturing
• Reason: Expansionist
Development, Innovation,
Efficiency, Leadership,
Confusion culture

3. The Context
• China is not in China
• China wants to be everywhere
• Able to make its presence
across countries and continents
• Reason: Demand and supply
factors within China

4. The China Network: 1995 vs. 2010

5. China’s Expansion
Across the World
through the Belt
and Road Initiative
(BRI)
• Conceptualized and formalized in 2013
under President Ji Xinping
• 72 countries, mostly developing
countries have signed the BRI
agreement
• Almost 138 countries have large
infrastructure projects signed with
China
• Port cities, particularly in Asia, as a
crucial key to unlocking the prospects of
BRI (e.g. Jakarta (Indonesia), Colombo
(Sri Lanka), Gwadar (Pakistan), Djibouti,
Kyaukphyu (Myanmar), Payra
(Bangladesh)

6. 72 BRI countries

8. Benefits of
expansion of
China for
China
• Absorbing resources available across
countries and continents
• Mega-infrastructural projects to sell
their steel and cement and to get their
labor force productively engaged across
borders, linking everything to China’s
global trade and investment
• Shipping resources to China at least cost

9. 7 BRI core
objectives
“China’s BRI is an ambitious programme to
connect Asia with Africa and Europe via
land and maritime networks along six
corridors with the aim of improving
regional integration, increasing trade and
stimulating economic growth.”
• Connectivity
• Openness
• Innovation
• Sustainable debt motivation
• Energy and food security motivation
• Balanced regional development
• Improving efficiency (via transport)

11. FDI policy
comparison
(BRI vs.
Non-BRI)

12. Chinese
exports to
BRI
economies

13. China’s
approach to
making
“friends”
• Generous infrastructure loans (at
high interest rate)
• Debt-diplomacy (particularly LI and
LMI countries)
• Agreements in countries where
corruption is high, media is weak or
muted, financial and legal
transparency is low or non-existent
• Soft power before Hard Power – BRI
as a new tool of Soft Power

14. Finance for BRI Infrastructure projects

15. China –
International
Relations and
“Port” Power
• China in Sri Lanka
• China in Pakistan
• China in Sri Lanka
• China in Myanmar
• China in Africa
• China (and) Australia

16. China in
the
South
“China”
Sea

17. Increasing the
negotiating
power of BRI
countries
• Local participation of policy makers, businesses
and local labour supply
• Environmental impact assessment
• Media and human rights watchdog
organisations
• Careful assessment of China’s hard and soft
power in BRI countries and long-term motifs of
investment
• National security and territoriality
considerations
• Balancing negotiations and investment deals
with opposing forces to reap the benefits locally
(USA, India, Japan, Australia or the “QUAD”or
China-India tug of war in South Asian BRI
countries)

18. The Ideal
Future?
• Be friendly and firm
• Impose conditionalities
• Facilitate complementarities
• Accord top priority to economic
efficiency, ecological compliance and
social inclusion
• Strengthening the sub-regional
innovation systems to do better than
China in all spheres of economic
activities.

19. Revisiting the
Principles of
the 1955
Bandung
Conference
Bandung conference: “Declaration on the
promotion of world peace and cooperation”
incorporating the principles of the UN Charter.
• Mutual respect” for other nations’
• Territorial integrity and sovereignty
• Nonaggression
• Noninterference in internal affairs
• Equality and mutual benefit, and
• Peaceful coexistence

20. China’s
Connectivity
or
Spiderweb?

21. Sources
• World Bank. 2019. Belt and Road Economics: Opportunities
and Risks of Transport Corridors. Washington, DC: World
Bank. License: Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 3.0 IGO.
• OECD (2018), "The Belt and Road Initiative in the global
trade, investment and finance landscape", in OECD Business
and Finance Outlook 2018, OECD Publishing, Paris
• World Bank (2005), Economic Growth in the 1990s: Learning
from a Decade of Reform, Washington DC.
• Xi, J. (2017a), Work Together to Build the Silk Road
Economic Belt and The 21st Century Maritime Silk Road,
Opening speech, The Belt and Road Forum for International
Cooperation, May.
• Zhaou, S. (2010), The China Model: Can it Replace the
Western Model of Modernisation, Journal of Contemporary
China, 19:65.

22. Thank
you Twitter: @jvinanchiarachi