Wed September, 2020, Age: 3 years
A new report from the London-based think-tank Chatham House offers a robust challenge to the “debt-trap diplomacy” thesis underscoring the strategy behind China’s massive Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) foreign policy venture. The report’s authors, Lee Jones and Shahar Hameiri, portray a reality that is much more messy and ambiguous. To begin with, they argue that the BRI has been driven less by global strategic considerations than by domestic economic factors — particularly, the need to find overseas outlets for Chinese industrial overcapacity.
