China says Belt and Road market is big enough to include foreign firms
China said on Wednesday that it does not impose business deals on other countries and that its Belt and Road trade and infrastructure initiative is large enough to include international companies.
The Belt and Road initiative, proposed by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2013 to promote China’s trade with around 70 countries in Asia, Europe and Africa, has met with increased scrutiny in the US and Europe due to concerns that it favors Chinese companies and is aimed at boosting Beijing’s political and military influence.
Seeking to address these concerns, the National Development and Research Commission (NDRC), China’s top economic planner, said projects under the initiative were mainly of a commercial nature and that China welcomes every country to join.
“We would like to reiterate that with the Belt and Road initiative proposed by China, we will neither form an exclusive small circle, nor will we dominate others and force business deals to take place,” NDRC spokesperson Meng Wei told a press conference in Beijing.
“The market to commonly build the Belt and Road project is big enough to include eligible enterprises from all countries and make the Belt and Road cake bigger to bring benefits to the people of the whole world,” she continued.
Meng added that decisions about releasing information on new projects belong to project owners and therefore do not depend on the Chinese government. Beijing, however, encourages companies to publish information about projects in their earliest stages, she said.
The remarks follow a report presented to the US State Department earlier this week that said China was handing out huge loans to gain political leverage and strategic assets in developing Asia-Pacific countries such as Pakistan, Djibouti and Sri Lanka.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry dismissed the report, saying that the governments of China’s cooperative partners and their people were in the best position to judge the results of this cooperation.
As much as $1 trillion worth of infrastructure investments — mostly from Chinese policy banks such as the Export-Import Bank of China and China Development Bank — have been planned under the Belt and Road initiative, with ongoing projects including direct cargo train links between China and Europe, the Pakistani port of Gwadar and motorways in Kenya.
Last month, 27 of the 28 national EU ambassadors to Beijing compiled an unusually critical report of the Belt and Road initiative, saying it “runs counter to the EU agenda for liberalizing trade and pushes the balance of power in favor of subsidized Chinese companies.”
In Hungary, a landmark Chinese rail project linking the country’s capital Budapest with Belgrade in Serbia was opened for public bidding last year, but only after an EU investigation.
Beijing responded to news about the EU ambassadors’ report by disputing its accuracy and saying that most EU leaders had expressed interest in joining the initiative.
Progress since first Belt and Road summit
The NRDC also said that progress had been made since the first international Belt and Road summit in Beijing a year ago.
The summit produced 279 results, including the decision to hold the China International Import Expo in Shanghai in November this year. Further, the majority of these decisions have seen concrete progress, the NRDC spokesperson said.
China has signed 103 Belt and Road cooperation agreements with 88 countries and international organizations, Meng said. Major projects like the 142-kilometer Jakarta–Bandung high-speed railway, which is China’s first overseas high-speed rail project, and the second line of the China-Russia oil pipeline are progressing, while direct cargo train links from China had reached 42 cities in 14 European countries.
China has invested over $70 billion in countries and regions covered by the Belt and Road initiative since 2013, with trade exceeding $5 trillion, according to the NRDC.