Move Europe East: Seizing an Opportunity to Make Central and Eastern Europe’s Economic and Political Wealth Equal or Surpass that of Western Europe
As an initiative, China’s “One Belt, One Road” or “OBOR” is innovative with Strengths and Opportunities that seem to outweigh Weaknesses and Threats. It carves out what has been called a “Blue Ocean” strategy to enable China to harvest and transport raw materials as well as to distribute and market products it manufactures or assembles across countries and regions that are only beginning to develop. In the background lurk potential debt burdens with which the people of China and of countries through which OBOR passes stand to become saddled, probably neither equally nor equitably. As in the opening lines of Charles Dickens book, A Tale of Two Cities, one may forecast that OBOR will be viewed historically as: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” Some OBOR beneficiaries are likely to reap the best of times with it. Others including China itself may face growing challenges, financial constraints particularly stemming from this burgeoning debt together with the risks associated therewith.
Author: David A. Jones, Professor of International Law, Management, Foreign Policy, Institute of The Americas and Europe, University of Warsaw
INTRODUCTION
This article evolved from the author’s Keynote Address to the “New Global Order” Conference sponsored by Pallas Athene Geopolitical Foundation (PAGEO) in cooperation with Magyar National Bank delivered at Budapest, Hungary, on 29 November 2017, in which my plan was to approach China’s “One Belt, One Road” or “OBOR” initiative much as if it were a tall building such as Hong Kong’s International Finance Centre (IFC2) turned on its side! In other words, as a “skyscraper” turned into a “landscraper” if we can accept that metaphorical imagery at the present moment, because tall buildings and OBOR have core virtues and core risks in common, and in both the virtues outnumber the risks, provided the risks are controlled. Unfortunately, not all risks have been controlled, not all risks can be controlled. As Huang Jing, Chinese-born American who was a professor at Singapore National University before he was expelled therefrom on 07 August 2017 for allegedly being a foreign agent, forecasted ominously back in 2016, “In other words, if everyone is economically in the same boat, then if China goes up everybody goes up and if China goes down then everybody goes down. That’s the nature of the idea.”[i] That is the danger of the OBOR initiative, so many eggs in one gigantic basket, long as it is across Eurasia. It is “insurable” so to speak, much in the way a tall building is insured by the general contractor during its construction, and by bank lenders once it is open to occupancy. In this context, China is the “general contractor” of OBOR, countries along the way will become possessors of its “apartment” units, some as owners, others as tenants. “As some Western countries move backwards by erecting ‘walls’, China is contriving to build bridges, both literal and metaphorical,” Xinhua said recently in a jab aimed primarily at the United States, especially its President, Donald J. Trump.[ii] According to recently-promoted Asia chair of the Swiss Partners Group, Dr. Kevin Liu:
Bridges are key to China’s strategy. The superpower status the US has achieved is to a great extent grounded on the security blanket it offered to its allies. Geopolitically, China decided a long time ago that security was too expensive an offer to make. Instead, this new superpower may offer connectivity.[iii]
Bridges do offer connectivity, provided they do not buckle then break, or become blocked one way or another such as politically or by natural or manmade disaster. In any of those situations, the connectivity relied upon becomes a liability. We shudder to envision OBOR ending up similar to the bridge the Soviet Union commenced to construct across the Yangtze River at Wuhan in 1955, then withdrew from completing following a political disagreement in 1956, leaving China to finish “connectivity” in 1957. If OBOR becomes only partially complete, that will invite intervention by other countries, the Russian Federation, Turkey, India coming to mind, across Eurasia.
Already, tensions have emerged along the China-Pakistan economic corridor, vehemently opposed by India’s prime minister Narendra Modi. Amidst allegations that China is planning to play its own 21st century version of the “Great Game” Britain and Russia played a century ago, China’s Xinhua news agency retorted that its “New Silk Road” is “not and will never be neocolonialism by stealth” just as it is not an opportunity for China to introduce a new hegemony, merely its chance to bring an end to an old hegemony.[iv] As it is difficult to imagine the United States as the “hegemon” of Eurasia, apparently this means that China aims to stop any new “Great Game” from transpiring across Eurasia by other powers. Does this mean that at least tacitly China is targeting the Russian Federation or Turkey as existing or potentially “new” hegemons across Eurasia, intending to head them off at the pass figuratively if not literally in the Urals if not in the Himalayas. An accurate forecast of where China is currently planning its OBOR to go is available at Xinhua Belt and Road Directory.[v]
SOURCE: BRUCE-LOCKHART, Anna. 2017. “China’s $900 billion New Silk Road. What you need to know,” World Economic Forum. 26 Jun. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/06/china-new-silk-road-explainer/
As we were speaking at the conference, different viewpoints were emerging concerning the significance of Pakistan’s rejection of Chinese foreign aid intended to enable construction of the USD 14 Billion Diamer-Bhasha dam located in Pakistani occupied Kashmir, also claimed by India, that both the Asia Development Bank (ADP) and World Bank Group (WBG) refused to fund because of the territory’s disputed sovereignty. Pakistan requested that China remove dam construction from the USD 60 Billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), required for the overland component of China’s OBOR, and permit Pakistan to construct the dam with its own funding, citing unreasonable tie-in requirements China had inserted into the dam component of the CPEC project.[vi] Another explanation is that cost structure of the Diamer-Bhasha dam nearly tripled from USD 5 Billion to USD 14 Billion, making it much more costly than anticipated, reflecting the heavy debt burden of OBOR to all participants including China itself.[vii] Another explanation being that severance of the dam from the CPEC that is core to OBOR was a strategy by China to evidence to the world that it abides by global rules, curtailing improvements made to disputed territories.[viii]
Even if no other problem existed, and many do exist, China’s OBOR initiative would be plagued by contentious relations that exist between China and a myriad of nations across which OBOR will span, even more problems by ever more contentions currently existing in relations between or among “neighbours of neighbours” that are likely to become exacerbated by OBOR. Such nations may not be neighbours of China, but of each other, sometimes far distant from China. Unlike in the game of “Checkers” in which “kings” may jump across checkerboard squares, goods being transported overland across OBOR must pass through one country to reach another, then through multiple other countries to reach an intended destination. Each country through which OBOR will pass poses an obstacle, “muddies” the road,[ix] some more than others, as Figure 2 below reflects. Moreover, within some countries and even within some regions of China itself, primarily its Xinjiang Province, local conflict poses ample threat to continuous cargo passage,[x] turbulence forecasted to increase as OBOR grows and as China and its trading partners come to rely thereupon, potentially to their mutual detriment. Even within countries, also, risk of slow payment, default, debt renegotiation can be expected to vary across regions. In the case of collapse of a country’s central government, the entire nation will be at risk; otherwise risk may be less near a country’s capital city or core, more along its periphery, called “center-periphery dissonance.”[xi]
Some actual or prospective OBOR partner countries already have displayed their dissatisfaction by aborting or delaying activation of Chinese OBOR projects, notably hydroelectric facilities.[xii] Occasionally, countries such as Pakistan have resorted to what one might term “cherry picking,” endeavouring to save their involvement in overall OBOR whilst withdrawing from less palatable projects, such as the Daimer-Bhasha Dam that is key to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), on the announced pretext that Chinese-imposed financial conditions were against Pakistan’s interests.[xiii] Less frequently mentioned is the fact, rather obvious, that if CPEC fails, OBOR is in jeopardy of lengthy delays. Alternative overland routes are other than abundant, those that exist are questionably viable on different accounts that range from the political to the military to the environmental. Risk of sabotage and other forms of terror exist.[xiv]
China’s Friends, Foes, and “Frenemies.”
SOURCE: “How China’s neighbours view it,” The Times of India. 16 November 2017.
To consider OBOR in context from the utmost East to the utmost West, turn to Figures 3 and 4 below that depict the vast distance involved. Whether by land or by sea, obstacles abound, more by land, but by sea the potential bottleneck is the Suez Canal, the only maritime gateway between Asia and Europe besides the long voyage around the Cape of Good Hope, South Africa. If the stability of the Suez Canal is sustainable, undoubtedly one major reason for China’s increased naval presence in the region, then OBOR appears to be ensured more by its maritime than by its overland components. If Chinese investment continues to pour into Piraeus, the deep water port nearby Athens, Greece, then this will become a Chinese “Marshall Plan” in principle, rescuing Greece from poverty and raising the prosperity of Central and Eastern European Countries (CEEC) in the process, with up to USD 1.5 Trillion in goods projected to be offloaded at Piraeus, already Europe’s busiest port,[xv] en route to destinations across Europe.[xvi] Will OBOR, overland or maritime, end up becoming a classical example of “imperial overstretch” as has been contended, in part because of China’s imbalanced Debt to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) Ratio that was 150 percent in 2008, since then has at least doubled to 300 percent, may reach 400 percent with “hidden” liabilities of the sort OBOR debt default might precipitate.[xvii]
SOURCE: McBride, James, and Julia Ro. 2016. “China’s Proposed New Silk Roads,” Council on Foreign Relations through Xinhua News.
China’s OBOR, by Land & Sea, Constructed & Projected, December 2015.
SOURCE: Mercator Institute for Chinese Studies (MERICS). 2015. “Projects Subsumed under OBOR by Chinese Authorities. Dec.
https://www.merics.org/fileadmin/user_upload/pic/China-Mapping/ChinaMapping_Silk_Road_DEC2015.pdf
Unfortunately for countries that are positioned along China’s OBOR, and potentially unfortunately for China itself as well with its debt rising rather rapidly,[xviii] cost structure of OBOR is forecasted to be repaid with loans, creating gargantuan debt burdens to be bourn initially at least by the states through which OBOR passes, as Figure 5 below evidences. That debt will become China’s own financial burden in the event of default, and default by one neighbor is likely to precipitate default by other countries in the neighbourhood, resembling nuclear fission. Some countries, notably India, fret that China might accept inappropriate debt payments such as from Pakistan in the form of allowing China to stockpile weaponry in violation of the Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty (FMCT) that Pakistan alone has refused to sign,[xix] in an effort by China and Pakistan working in collaboration to encircle India. By doing this, China would transparently violate the FMCT, an unlikely risk for China to take that would besmirch its reputation as a good global partner generally and its OBOR image particularly. More than anything else, the key deterrent to Chinese participation in stockpiling of weaponry in violation of the FMCT or any other international agreement is China’s endeavor to reap the economic benefits of a “Blue Ocean” across Eurasia[xx] in the absence of most conventional competition. That opportunity could be short-circuited by international retaliation that likely would become the consequence of misbehavior.
Debt Locations That Will Bear the Burdens of Financing OBOR.
SOURCE: Gilani, Sayed. 2017. “China’s 6 Magical Economic Corridors ‘One Belt, One Road’ The Silk Route,” Linkedin.com. 25 Mar. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/chinas-6-magical-economic-corridors-one-belt-road-silk-syed-gilani/
OBOR runs substantially parallel with China’s quest for supply chain management in minerals required for factory production particularly, as Figures 6 and 7 below depict using separate data bases some of which overlap. Part of this supply chain will replace existing supplies in Africa or elsewhere that are more distant and consequently more costly to transport.[xxi] OBOR is intended to provide rail and road infrastructure required for delivery of Chinese-assembled goods to Europe, together with maritime infrastructure serving similar objectives. In addition, OBOR is intended to put countries along the OBOR path to work, supplying China with progressively more raw materials including energy that it requires in its own manufacturing, with countries located along OBOR gradually performing some of that manufacturing instead of China because of lower labour cost structure and China’s ambition to relocate some of its manufacturing pollution abroad in order to clean up its own domestic environment, consistent with its signature on the Paris Climate Agreement that leaves only Syria and the United States absent as signatories therefrom.[xxii]
OBOR and China’s Global Supply Chain Management, 2016.
SOURCE: Chatham House and DRC. 2016. “Navigating the New Normal: China and Global Resources Governance,”Amazonaws.com.https://chinadialogue-production.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/content_image/content_image/805/OBOR_map_EN.png
SOURCE: ChinaDialogue. 2015. “Resource Flows into China, 2014,” Amazonaws.com. https://chinadialogue-production.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/content_image/content_image/2662/Screen_Shot_2017-05-11_at_12.25.09.png
“Move Poland West.”
“Move Poland West” was the consensus Soviet Union Marshal Josef Stalin reached with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, secretively at the Teheran Conference held from 28 November 1943 to 01 December 1943, with American President Franklin Delano Roosevelt abstaining at that time from discussion of Poland, fearful of negative repercussions in the 1944 Presidential election[xxiii] with six million Polish-Americans living in the United States.[xxiv] Following the 1944 election, Roosevelt supported the plan to “Move Poland West” and it was announced publicly at the Yalta Conference, 01 to 11 February 1945, shrinking Germany’s Eastern territory whilst capitulating to Stalin’s demand that never again can Poland function as “a corridor for an attack on Russia”.[xxv]
Instead, with the deep water port China is constructing at Piraeus, Greece, East- Central Europe generally and Poland particularly will become a corridor to facilitate distribution of goods made or assembled in Asia to markets across Europe, as well as a corridor through which to supply China with European raw materials. Goods from Asia including China projected to be offloaded at Piraeus upon port completion will be valued at between USD One Trillion and 1.5 Trillion, with some of that value projected to come from reductions of goods currently delivered from Asia to Europe at Western Europe’s busiest cargo ports by volume: Rotterdam, Antwerp, Hamburg and Amsterdam, with Western Europe’s first, second and fourth busiest cargo ports located in Netherlands, its third busiest in Germany, as Figure 8 below evidences. If Piraeus rises from 20th place to 10th place, for example, coupled with the expected withdrawal of United Kingdom from the European Community (“Brexit”), in reality this means to “Move Europe East” in terms of “core” versus “periphery”, the only question being how much, how fast? That depends upon the driving variables. In 2015, 25 percent of cargo flowing into Rotterdam, Western Europe’s largest cargo port, was from Asia.[xxvi] It will make little sense for much of the cargo traffic coming to Europe from Asia to bypass Piraeus, only to have to return Eastward by highway or railway. Presumably, therefore, one could forecast accurately that at least one half of Rotterdam’s TEU container volume arriving from Asia would be diverted to Piraeus once that port reaches capacity.[xxvii] Once this paradigm materialises, in effect it will mean that the economic centre of Europe will move Eastward. Although that fact alone might not mean that Western Europe’s wealth relative to the rest of the world will dip, it will signify a rise in Eastern Europe’s wealth relative to that of Western Europe, that is a “zero sum” game. In turn, sooner rather than later, the CEEC bloc will gain more economic clout in Brussels, and almost certainly will attract much more FDI from the United States,[xxviii] from Asian giants such as China itself, Japan, South Korea. Functionally, this translates into “Moving Europe Eastward.”
Top 20 container ports in Europe, 2015 – on the basis of volume of 1,000 TEU containers handled [TEU=Twenty-foot Equivalent Units or 20 Foot ISO Container]
SOURCE: “Maritime ports freight and passenger statistics,” Eurostat Statistics Explained, Table 4. January 2017. http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Main_Page
Figure below illustrates the location of Europe’s largest cargo ports in 2015, clearly reflecting not only their proximity to each other, but the distance of each to various final destinations. Most of Europe’s major ports just three years ago were in Western Europe, considerably distant from final destinations in Central or Eastern Europe. That paradigm will change with OBOR generally, with expansion of Greece’s port at Piraeus especially. This map positions the location of each port to important inland waterways such as the River Danube that also will accommodate freight traffic offloaded at Piraeus. As ports in Central and Eastern Europe will grow, ports in Western Europe will shrink. This will help to “Move Europe East.”
Main cargo ports in the reporting countries of Europe, 2015, by gross weight of goods handled.png
SOURCE: “Main cargo ports in the reporting countries 2015 by gross weight of goods handled.png,” Eurostat Statistics Explained. January 2017. http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Maritime_ports_freight_and_passenger_statistics
CONCLUSION
An initiative such as OBOR probably will be a “win-win” situation for all participants, even if it does carry some economic and political risks with it. Almost certainly, it will be a “win-win” victory for CEEC bloc countries, although not necessarily equally. Very likely, the biggest winner will be Greece, with its Piraeus Port jumping from 20th in Europe to at or near the top position. This rearranges the commercial architecture of Europe. Countries such as Hungary and Poland through which vast numbers of freight containers must flow, whether overland from South Asia by highway or railway, or by sea to Piraeus and then overland by highway, railway or inland waterway to their final destination, will witness their stocks soaring. Territories through which China’s OBOR will pass as well as final destination locations stand to become and to remain largely “Blue Ocean” environments, sustainable across the foreseeable future. In principle, this means that Europe’s wealth will move east, and with that wealth will move political influence, adumbrative of a “New World Order”.
Author: David A. Jones, Professor of International Law, Management, Foreign Policy, Institute of The Americas and Europe, University of Warsaw
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[i] SHEPARD, Wade. 2016. “The Countries Building The New Silk Road — And What They’re Winning In The Process,” Forbes. 22 Nov.
[ii] BRUCE-LOCKHART, Anna. 2017. “China’s $900 billion New Silk Road. What you need to know,” World Economic Forum. 26 Jun. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/06/china-new-silk-road-explainer/
[iii] Ibid.
[iv] “Commentary: Is China’s B&R initiative just hegemony in disguise?” Xinhua. 13 May 2017. http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2017-05/13/c_136279650.htm
[v] XINHUA Belt and Road Directory, Silkroad.news.cn.
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[vi] DASGUPTAL, Saibal. 2017. “In a jolt to OBOR, Pakistan rejects China dam aid,” The Times of India. 16 Nov. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/pakistan/pakistan-walks-out-of-chinese-project-for-pok-dam/articleshow/61662966.cms
[vii] BRADSHER, Keith. 2017a. “China Can’t Sustain Its Debt-Fueled Binge,” Moody’s Says,” The New York Times. 23 May. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/23/business/moodys-downgrades-china-economy-debt.html; BRADSHER, Keith. 2017b. “China’s Currency Rebounds as Economic Optimism Returns,” The New York Times. 11 Sep. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/11/business/china-currency-renminbi.html
[viii] CHADHURY, Dipanjan Roy. 2017. “Pakistan Rejection of China’s Dam Aimed at Showing OBOR in Line with Global Rules,” The Economic Times. 20 Nov. https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/defence/pakistan-rejection-of-chinas-dam-aimed-at-showing-obor-in-line-with-global-rules/articleshow/61715963.cms
[ix] ECONOMY, Elizabeth C. 2018. The Third Revolution: Xi Jinping and the New Chinese State. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. EISENMAN, Joshua, and STEWART, Kevin T. 2017. “China’s New Silk Road Is Getting Muddy,” Foreign Policy. 09 Jan. http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/01/09/chinas-new-silk-road-is-getting-muddy/
[x] BOKAREV, Dimitry. 2017. “OBOR and the Terrorist Threat in China,” New Eastern Outlook. 16 Dec. https://journal-neo.org/2017/12/16/china-and-t-threat/
[xi] KOROTAYEV, Andrey, ISSAEV, Leonid, and ZINKINA, Julia. 2015. “Center-Periphery Dissonance as a Possible Factor of the Revolutionary Wave of 2013-2014: A Cross-National Analysis,” Cross-Cultural Research, Vol. 49, No. 5, 461-488 at 464-467 and 470, Table 2.
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[xii] DASGUPTAL, Saibal, and Anjana PASRICHA. 2014. “Pakistan, Nepal, Myanmar Back Away From Chinese Projects,” Voice of America (VOA) News. 04 Dec. https://www.voanews.com/a/three-countries-withdraw-from-chinese-projects/4148094.html
[xiii] “CPEC in Dock After Pakistan, Nepal Withdraw from Dam Projects in China,” The Economic Times. 29 November 2017. https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/defence/cpec-in-dock-after-pakistan-nepal-withdraw-from-dam-projects-in-china/articleshow/61849911.cms
[xiv] BOKAREV, Dimitry. 2017. “OBOR and the Terrorist Threat in China,” New Eastern Outlook. 16 Dec. https://journal-neo.org/2017/12/16/china-and-t-threat/
[xv] HOROWITZ, Jason, and ALDERMAN, Liz. 2017. “Chastised by EU, a Resentful Greece Embraces China’s Cash and Interests,” The New York Times. 26 Aug. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/26/world/europe/greece-china-piraeus-alexis-tsipras.html
[xvi] JONES, David A. 2015. “Hybrid Conflict and Encirclement: Reconfiguration of Eastern Europe by NATO, Trade Barriers, and a Chinese Solution for Greece,” Journal of International Relations and Diplomacy, Vol. 3, No. 8, 497-510. Aug. http://www.davidpublisher.org/Public/uploads/Contribute/55ebfd364c909.pdf
[xvii] CHANG, Gordon G. 2018. “The Real China Challenge: Imperial Overstretch,” The National Interest. 24 Feb. http://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-real-china-challenge-imperial-overstretch-24635
[xviii] DOGRA, Gaurav. 2017. “China’s debt pile growing fast despite years of efforts to contain it,” Reuters. 24 Nov. https://www.reuters.com/article/china-markets-debt/graphic-chinas-debt-pile-growing-fast-despite-years-of-efforts-to-contain-it-idUSL3N1NU37E?feedType=RSS&feedName=rbssFinancialServicesAndRealEstateNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2FUKBankingFinancial+%28News+%2F+UK+%2F+Financial+Services+and+Real+Estate%29
[xix] GHOSHAL, Debalina. 2015. “Pakistan Increasing its Nuclear Stockpile: India the Only Threat Factor,” South Asia Program, Hudson Institute. 28 Oct.
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[xxi] Chatham House and DRC. 2016. “Navigating the New Normal: China and Global Resources Governance,” Amazonaws.com. https://chinadialogue-production.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/content_image/content_image/805/OBOR_map_EN.png; ChinaDialogue. 2015. “Resource Flows into China, 2014,” Amazonaws.com. https://chinadialogue-production.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/content_image/content_image/2662/Screen_Shot_2017-05-11_at_12.25.09.png
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[xxv] Ibid., 15.
[xxvi] “Europe’s biggest port is a barometer of the world economy,” The Economist. 19 March 2016. https://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21695096-europes-biggest-port-barometer-world-economy-shipping-news
[xxvii] VAN DER PUTTEN, Frans-Paul, ed., MONTESANO, Francesco Saverio, VAN DE VEN, Johan, and VAN HAM, Peter. 2016. The Geopolitical Relevance of Piraeus and China’s New Silk Road for Southeast Europe and Turkey,” Clingendael Report. Den Hague: Netherlands Institute of International Relations Clingendael. Dec.
[xxviii]DUFF, Gordon. 2017. “Misunderstanding America,” New Eastern Outlook. 18 Dec. https://journal-neo.org/2017/12/18/misunderstanding-america/
