The Freeman

China's Silk Road revival hits the buffers

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SINGAPORE — From a stalled Indonesian rail project to an insurgency­threatened economic corridor in Pakistan, China's push to revive Silk Road trade routes is running into problems that risk tarnishing the economic crown jewel of Xi Jinping's presidency.

The "One Belt, One Road" initiative, unveiled by Xi in 2013, envisages linking China with Africa, Asia and Europe through a network of ports, railways, roads and industrial parks.

Xi, the most powerful Chinese leader in decades, has pushed the infrastruc­ture drive which is central to his goal of extending Beijing's economic and geopolitic­al clout.

The initiative was enshrined in the Communist Party's constituti­on at a key congress last month, and some estimates say more than $1 trillion has been pledged to it, with projects proposed in some 65 countries.

But on the ground it has run into problems. Projects traverse insurgency-hit areas, dictatorsh­ips and chaotic democracie­s, and face resistance from both corrupt politician­s and local villagers.

"Building infrastruc­ture across countries like this is very complicate­d," said Murray Hiebert, from Washington think tank the Center for Strategic and Internatio­nal Studies (CSIS), who has studied some of the projects in Southeast Asia.

"You've got land issues, you have to hammer out funding agreements, you have to hammer out technologi­cal issues."

Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoma­n Hua Chunying however insisted the initiative was "moving forward smoothly".

Beijing won the contract to build Indonesia's first high-speed railway in September 2015, but more than two years later work has barely started on the route from Jakarta to the city of Bandung.

A recent visit to Walini, where President Joko Widodo broke ground on the train line in January last year, found excavators flattening land but no track laid for the train, which is meant to start operating in 2019.

 ?? AGENCE FRANCE PRESS ?? Indonesian models look at scale models of Chinese-made bullet trains on exhibition at a shopping mall in Jakarta.
AGENCE FRANCE PRESS Indonesian models look at scale models of Chinese-made bullet trains on exhibition at a shopping mall in Jakarta.

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