The Third Phase of China’s Belt and Road

James Crabtree argues that the COVID-19 pandemic represents a third distinct phase of the BRI, even as its underlying aims remain the same. While infrastructure projects will face a more challenging environment, he challenges the notion that Beijing will now downplay the BRI. Instead, he suggests that the Initiative is likely to change its focus, especially to the Health Silk Road and Digital Silk Road. These projects are less lavish and eye-catching, but the BRI may be more critical to China than ever.

China’s landmark Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) infrastructure scheme is entering a new, uncertain third phase. The first began with BRI’s formal launch in 2013, leading up to the initial BRI Forum, hosted in Beijing in 2017. The second kicked off five years later in 2019 at the second BRI forum, where President Xi Jinping sketched the beginnings of a new agenda for the programme’s future. Now, the COVID-19 pandemic looks set to re-shape BRI once again, leading to a distinct third phase of development. Even so, BRI’s basic strategic aim remains the same, namely to ensure that new networks of natural resources and trade, and the global value chains that connect them, flow between China and its partner countries, rather than between Asia and the long-economically dominant nations of North America and Europe.

James Crabtree is an associate professor in practice at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore. He is author of "The Billionaire Raj." Read more about his research and suggestions on the direction of The Belt and Road Initiative in HKUST IEMS Policy Briefs No. 1