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The End of the Chinese Century? How Xi Jinping lost the Belt and Road Initiative By Bertil Lintner
The Belt and Road Initiative, when first unveiled by Xi Jinping in 2013, was envisioned as even bigger and grander than America’s Marshall Plan
China is entering an era of political uncertainty and the rest of the world may have to pay the price for Xi’s inflated dreams of power and China’s greatness.’
The Belt and Road Initiative, when first unveiled by Xi Jinping in 2013, was envisioned as even bigger and grander than America’s Marshall Plan. Famously referred to as the ‘New Silk Route’, it proposed an overland ‘Silk Road Economic Belt’ connecting China with Europe through Central Asia and the ‘Maritime Silk Road’ that the Chinese claim existed in ancient times across the Indian Ocean. The BRI would not only restore China’s glory as a global trading nation, but also establish its status as the world leader, overtaking the United States.
A decade later, not everyone in Asia and the Pacific shares Xi’s visions of a China-dominated future. Countries like Sri Lanka and Laos have fallen into Chinese debt traps due to the loans they took as part of the BRI; in others like Thailand and Central Asian republics, Chinese investment is unwelcome; and in some, like Pakistan, the opposition to China’s forays has been outright violent.
In The End of the Chinese Century?, journalist Bertil Lintner takes us through the history of the BRI and China’s global expansionist plans. He casts an expert eye on the once-much-vaunted project’s future and what its failure might mean for the ‘Chinese Century’—and how that would affect India, which continues to be a counterpoint to China on the world stage.
Bertil Lintner says, ‘In 2013, Xi Jinping launched his Belt and Road Initiative which was meant to be even bigger than America’s Marshall Plan, which helped Europe rebuild after World War II. It was going to create a new and, he said, more just world order. Xi also wanted to make China great again and turn the country from being an economic growth engine into a global political and military force, which would eventually overtake the United States as the world’s most powerful nation. A decade later, few if any of those grand plans have come to fruition. In this book, I strive to examine what went wrong – and what Xi is likely to do to salvage what’s left of his dream to make China Great again.’
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Bertil Lintner is a Swedish journalist, author and strategic consultant who has been writing about Asia for nearly four decades. He was formerly the Myanmar correspondent of the Far Eastern Economic Review and the Asia correspondent for the Swedish daily Svenska Dagbladet, and Denmark’s Politiken. He currently works as a correspondent for Asia Times. He has written extensively about Myanmar, India, China and North Korea for various local, national and international publications in over thirty countries. He mainly writes about organized crime, ethnic and political insurgencies and regional security. He has published several books, including China’s India War and Great Game East. In 2004, Lintner received an award for excellence in reporting about North Korea from the Society of Publishers in Asia and, in 2014, another award from the same society for writing about religious conflicts in Myanmar. He is also the recipient of three writing grants from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
Published by HarperCollins
Paperback | Non-fiction | Geopolitical | 236 pp | INR 599
Available wherever books are sold | Releasing on 16th October 2024
