“For years to come, OBOR looks likely to be the toast of Western boardrooms,” says a new report from the Economist, which draws on Reconnecting Asia’s open-source database of over 2000 infrastructure projects. While Western companies are winning “Belt and Road” business, Chinese firms are participating in significantly more projects.
The news is full these days of “historic” train links between China and Europe. The latest locomotive to grab headlines was a China-Europe freight train that set off from eastern China this month. Earlier this year, the first direct freight train linking China and the United Kingdom arrived in London. But these powerful symbols aren’t always what they seem. A closer look cautions against declaring that the Silk Road is back in business.
The Belt and Road initiative’s potential impact on international trade — cargo volume and velocity, shipping routes, supply chain reliability, and transparency — has strategic benefits and risks for the United States because of its dependence on importing raw and strategic materials for manufacturing processes, and exporting finished goods to emerging markets where consumer catchment areas are expected to be created or expanded.
China’s high-speed rail ambitions are running off the tracks, the Financial Times reports in a special investigation that draws from Reconnecting Asia’s database. Several projects have been suspended or canceled, “stoking suspicion, public animosity, and mountains of debt.”
Major infrastructure projects… can still fail economically in terms of opportunity costs either because of excessive costs or insufficient demand but their political importance can be very significant, even momentous.