The Strategic Challenges of the Silk Roads

ALEXANDRE CORNET: The New Silk Road has officially been revealed in 2013 by the president Xi Jinping. Can you tell us what the project is all about?

EMMANUEL LINCOT: The project is also known as “Yi dai yi lu” in Chinese, translated in English by “One Belt One Road” and even more precisely (2017) by “Belt Road Initiative” (BRI). It is a global project which aims for China at redeploying its foreign investments in infrastructure projects. The Chinese strategy has several goals. Without a doubt, the main basis of this strategy is to capture the world’s resources, exploit them and secure their routing. Let us make no mistake: the new Silk Roads have a hegemonic purpose. As same as Great Britain in the past, a logic of counters fall into place by the creation of ports or various platforms with a civil or even military vocation, which therefore assure to China some logistics relays. This is the “String of Pearls”, of which a non-negligible part of converging to the European Union (EU), first trading partner of China. This is also with the European Union that China looks forward to collaborate regarding sensitive technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI). Thereby, last year, President Xi Jinping’s Davos appeal to focus on the free trade was indeed symbolic, all the more so Donald Trump has the vague desire to restrict the access of Chinese products to their market…