 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. The China-led Belt Road Initiative is the largest ever infrastructure and connectivity project ever planned. The Chinese idea is to fund a series of road, rail and sea routes with linked infrastructure projects such as ports. And the idea is to sort of undermine western hegemony over trade and finance and hasten the shift to a multipolar world. And of course such a huge project which involves apparently 65 countries, close to $4 trillion in cumulative investment, and some 900 projects will raise a lot of questions. And to address these questions, we are joined by Prabir Purkayasa, the founder-editor of NewsClick. Prabir, welcome to this interview. The Belt Road Initiative is an attempt at reconfiguring world trade. Currently, how is world trade reconfigured and what is China attempting to do with this massive project? It's clear that current global trade is really by sea and dominated by a certain set of powers who were the maritime powers, originally the colonial powers, and now it's the United States as well. They dominate the current world trade. 90% of the world's trade is known to be on sea. So this is what the current configuration of the world trade is dominated by maritime powers and on the seas. The Eurasian landmass had the original silk route, which is how the connections were. So this would also bring about a change in terms of the European and Asian countries' ability to trade together using land routes. So revival of the original land routes, rail, pipelines, roads, this would then be the configuration of the trade as well. It's not only to see this as either an issue. It's not that the old ocean routes would go away. They would still stay, but this would also bring the Asian economies, the European economies together. Using what were the original ties that they had and a lot of goods which today really can't move. For instance, from Central Asia, if you want to bring fruits to India, for instance. Now that could reach through a railroad route probably in about four to five days. Now it cannot. So those are the kind of changes that could take place. So there is a possibility of looking at new opportunities for trade using this. And this project is coming at a time when growth is plateauing in the West. The sort of liberal democratic free trade framework is in crisis. You see it with the Trump presidency. You see it with Brexit. And the sort of analysis is that globalization will no longer be led by the West but by the rest, with China taking a lead. So in terms of China leading globalization, how do you think it will do it as opposed to the earlier phase? What are the institutions that it will set up or are going to help with projects such as this? And linked to that, there are concerns about increasing indebtedness of countries that will be part of this project. How would you address some of these concerns? There are really two sets of issues here. One is how do we look at, for instance, the global trade in terms of what was being done earlier, which was really opening the global south, the economies of the global south to finish goods services from the West. That was what would be called the neoliberal expansion of trade, which was also the financial services of the banks, finance capital and so on. I think that has started to implode inwards as the global south has developed manufacturing and one of the consequences of China developing manufacturing in India, for instance, Southeast Asia, even Bangladesh, examples being textiles. So you see a shift of manufactured goods taking from the West to the global south, global north to the global south. From the global south, manufactured goods coming back to the global north economies. Now, therefore, the protectionist measures in the global north, which Brexit is a particular example, but also Trump, as you have said, are examples that they are rethinking globalization if it doesn't help them to export more goods. What should we do? What should other countries do? I think we need to look at a set of measures by which you protect our industries as well allow global economies to grow, not in competition with each other, but with a partnership to each other. So I think the partnership model is what we need to really advance and if we do that, the certain consequences follow. What the World Bank did was really impose certain conditionalities with attached to their loans. We are really looking at loan coming in ways which will not be so conditional, but which will accept that there is sovereignty of each country to do what it wants, not what the World Bank wants. So we do need to see that shift takes place, whether China is going to play the same game as the global north did, use its economic and financial power to do it, or it will have a more cooperative way of looking at trade and economic development. That's what we have to see. But one thing is very clear, maritime power allows you to trade to any place without any barriers. If you have land trade, it's a cooperative venture. It's not a competitive venture like a sea trade is. So therefore land trade necessarily means cooperation of all the countries because if one country does not behave well as it were, the entire land trade then comes to a halt. So which are the institutions that China is setting up to fund the Belt Road Initiative? Well, there are two sets of institutions. One is really Chinese institutions, which are the Chinese banks, the Silk Road Fund, which are going to be controlled by China. The other two institutions, one is what's called the BRICS Bank, which is supposed to also have a hundred billion dollars of capital, part of it paid up capital, part of it is going to be what it will raise from the market, and the Asia Infrastructure Bank, which also is supposed to have a capital of hundred billion dollars. Both the last two are multilateral institutions and China is basically saying that it is not going to control these institutions. It will be controlled cooperatively and use certain set of conditions which everybody will accept because there are parts of it. Of course China is the largest shareholder, so it will have a larger voice. There's no doubt about that. But the way they are placing it, it seems to be, it will be following multilateral principles of how other banks have operated, except it will not have the conditionalities that we talked about. But the Chinese banks are concerned, obviously they are going to be funding largely Chinese infrastructure companies in terms of the projects and maybe also certain other companies. It's also very clear, if western companies come in, global north companies come in to set up any part of the infrastructure in any of these countries, then their banks would also be partners. And that's why one of the reasons why a number of European countries are partners in the Asia Infrastructure Bank, because if they are not, then their home companies may not be able to code for this project. So far almost 100 countries have expressed interest in the Belt Road Initiative. Recently, earlier this week, China had the Belt Road Summit in which at last count it was some 57 countries that participated with some 29 heads of state. And interestingly, India kept out of it. And there's a strong sort of voice within the government to boycott this project, citing concerns about the sort of infrastructure corridor from Gilgit-Baltistan towards the Gwadapur. What is your assessment of that and what is the position you think India should take on this project? India has in this case been really caught on the wrong foot. It went with the American position, this Belt Road Initiative is bogus. It will be too dead driven. It will create all kinds of burdens on the countries. Now, if the countries who are interested in development do not see it as a burden, for us to say it won't, doesn't really sound very credible. The Americans who initially were supporting India in this opposition to the Belt Road Initiative, they seem to have climbed on the bandwagon and they have sent a delegation to the Belt Road Initiative, leaving India out on the branch. So this is one part of what we see as the developments taking place. Simply put, there is a huge economic activity which is centering around the Belt Road Initiative. We talked about $4 trillion. Estimates are these countries whom we are talking about need something like $20 trillion to build their infrastructure, of which this is only a part. So given that being out of that economic activity doesn't really make too much sense, China had given the option that India should take on the responsibility as a partner in the Belt Road Initiative, joining both Southeast Asia as well as to the Chowdhawar Port, Iran, also the coastal route that they were proposing. So India had the possibility of becoming a partner. It was just possible that if India had entered the initiative, it could have asked China that the Guadalupe route should not go through disputed territory which India has been opposing and shifts it somewhere by which it avoids the disputed territory. That is a possibility. Whether it have happened or not, we don't know. But however to make the larger Belt Road Initiative centre-round, entirely the question of Gueliquin-Baltistan, I think in retrospect India will find this has been a mistake. Given the kind of economic activities that it is helping to build and the long-term trade implications, it might mean that India gets itself cut off from a very large trade base that will develop here. Prabhu, taking on from your point about the massive infrastructure requirements in the south, this sort of shift from the sea routes to inland will entail massive construction in a lot of the areas. And there is the old critique of what will be the environmental consequences of these developments, land grabs, massive displacement of communities. And it brings us back to the old questions of development versus environment. How do you think countries should respond to this? One of the critiques about China is that all its banks and institutions don't have adequate safeguards, either environment or social. How does one address these concerns that are now emerging from environmental groups in many of these countries? Well, I think there are two sets of issues again involved. There is already a pattern of development that is there. This is being driven by a certain kind of understanding, which is what we call the neoliberal capitalist development, which is seeing a whole range of services develop, not helping the people directly. It's in fact helping to immiserise large sections of the people. Given that we need an alternative development model. I do not believe there is a non-development model that is possible. We need to develop infrastructure. We need to develop urban land. We need to develop urbanisation of a certain kind. What kind of urbanisation? Sure, there should be a debate on that. But at the moment, our cities are largely on the sea shore because our trade is really outward, connecting to ex colonies. So, ex colonial pass, because we are ex colonies. So, the global trade, if we look at it function as if it's a suction, drawing out resources from the global south, and then sending finished goods back to the, from the global north. That is what used to be, even if the manufacturing base is shifting to China and some of the global south countries, this pattern of urbanisation and trade still remains. So, we need to look at it from the point of view in internal development. Now, trade lines are there. It's not that the rail lines which are being proposed will come up anew. Already exist. Roads exist. They need to be upgraded to make trade happen inland. So, I don't see this as something qualitatively new. It's for instance, the Indian railway system already exists. You can refurbish, have double lanes. You could have the superior trains running on the same tracks. You can upgrade the tracks. Now, all of that does not need, need therefore the huge land raps to take place. So, I do not see building infrastructure, including electricity, including pipelines, as something which is really the kind of things we are talking about, which is destruction of environment and so on. So, I think there are mistakes to believe that infrastructure development is what is causing destruction of the environment. And I do believe that fundamentally these countries which are being termed as developing countries or are relatively economically backward, they do need to develop a much superior infrastructure. And therefore, I would say that it's not development versus lack of it, but really what kind of development we want, both of which would involve building infrastructure. Thank you very much Prabir for this analysis. And this is a project that is still in the making and we hope to come back to you for more analysis on various aspects of the Belt Road Initiative. Thank you very much.