Filling The Gaps
With focus on “small yet smart” projects, the BRI continues to bring opportunities for development around the world
In this year’s government work report, Chinese Premier Li Qiang pointed out that China will strive for solid progress in high-quality Belt and Road cooperation. The country will steadily advance cooperation on major projects and implement a number of “small yet smart” projects for improving the people’s well-being. As an international public product and cooperation platform, the achievements of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in the past 10 years have been noticed around the world. However, the spread of misinformation and groundless accusations against the programmes have never stopped. For instance, some Western media have claimed that the investment amount of the BRI has significantly “shrunk,” China’s loans to Belt and Road countries are declining, and its investment is unsustainable.
But Chinese and foreign experts interviewed by ChinAfrica said that despite the severe impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the cooperation in jointly building the BRI remains robust and has achieved remarkable results. In fact, the BRI is entering a harvest period. Belt and Road cooperation has progressed from “sketching the outline” to “filling in the details,” and blueprints have been turned into real projects. A large number of signature projects and “small yet smart” people-centred programmes have been launched to provide opportunities and share dividends with the world.
Ulterior motives
Dennis Munene, executive director of the China-Africa Centre at the Africa Policy Institute and a Ph.D. candidate at the University of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, believes that Western countries have a pessimistic view of the BRI mainly because they regard it as an arena of geopolitical rivalry. He said that for a