Financial Times
China
is at risk of becoming a colonialist power
Heavy lending to Pakistan as part of the Belt and Road
Initiative could backfire
Jamil Anderlini
The artfully preserved ruins of Beijing’s old summer palace are a
powerful reminder of the decision by French and British troops to burn
the place down in October 1860.
The British high commissioner ordered the destruction as retribution for
the murder of 20 emissaries, including a British journalist, who had
been sent to negotiate a truce with the Manchu empire. But this crucial
detail is never mentioned in the Chinese government’s official version
of the event.
The sanitised historical record taught in schools and drummed into every
Chinese citizen today is part of a decades-old propaganda effort to
portray imperialism and colonialism as the exclusive preserve of evil
foreigners. According to this narrative, China is a peace-loving nation
lacking any ill intentions and constitutionally incapable of acting like
a bully or coloniser.
Many countries (and people) think this way about themselves. But China’s
attitude raises a danger when combined with its new-found position as a
rising superpower with an explicit plan to project its power across the
globe.
The Belt and Road Initiative, President Xi Jinping’s signature foreign
policy, is intended to link China and Europe along the ancient Silk Road
with a network of Chinese-built roads, railways, ports and pipelines.
The BRI has a strategic element. China hopes to reduce the importance of
chokepoints such as the Strait of Malacca and the South China Sea
through which most of its energy and other commodity imports must
travel.
But overall the BRI is mostly what Beijing says it is: a “win-win”
project to provide infrastructure to countries that desperately need it.
While the intention behind the BRI is positive from the perspective of
neighbouring countries, if China is not careful, the outcomes may not be
so benign.
On a visit to Beijing last month, the recently re-elected nonagenarian
Malaysian president Mahathir Mohamad warned that the BRI risks becoming
a “new version of colonialism”. Malaysia has been the second-biggest
recipient of BRI investment, but Mr Mahathir has already cancelled or
suspended more than $23bn-worth of “unfair” Chinese contracts signed
before he took office.
This criticism from a developing country — rather than sanctimonious
western democracies — genuinely shocked Chinese officials, who are used
to thinking of their country as a victim of imperialist colonial
aggressors.
Sri Lanka has had its own BRI backlash after a Chinese state-controlled
company signed a 99-year lease for a strategic port in exchange for debt
relief. Critics there accused China of intentionally leading Sri Lanka
into a “debt trap” so it could seize the port.
The episode highlights Beijing’s inability to view its actions as
anything but benevolent and its tendency to ignore historical echoes.
After all, China experienced its own national humiliation in the form of
what they call the “unequal treaty” that gave Britain a 99-year lease
over Hong Kong’s New Territories at the end of the 19th century.
In fact, China’s leaders and theoreticians would do well to study the
history of British imperialism for evidence of how economic projects can
lead to empire. The UK did not initially set out to conquer India, but
the experience of the British East India Company proves that “the flag
follows trade” at least as often as the other way around.
Today, China is at risk of inadvertently embarking on its own colonial
adventure in Pakistan— the biggest recipient of BRI investment and once
the East India Company’s old stamping ground. Pakistan’s leaders have
described their relationship with China as that of “iron brothers” with
ties that are “higher than the Himalayas, deeper than the deepest ocean
and sweeter than honey”.
But this hyperbolic rhetoric masks the fact that Pakistan is now
virtually a client state of China. Many within the country worry openly
that its reliance on Beijing is already turning it into a colony of its
huge neighbour. The risks that the relationship could turn problematic
are greatly increased by Beijing’s ignorance of how China is perceived
abroad and its reluctance to study history through a non-ideological
lens.
For now, the Pakistani military oversees security for the $62bn of
Chinese infrastructure projects in the country. But China already sends
small numbers of security officers disguised as ordinary workers to
Pakistan to ensure an extra level of protection for these projects,
according to Pakistani officials.
It is easy to envisage a scenario in which militant attacks on Chinese
projects overwhelm the Pakistani military and China decides to openly
deploy the People’s Liberation Army to protect its people and assets.
That is how “win-win” investment projects can quickly become the
foundations of empire. |