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The Diplomat
A new report highlights Kazakhstan as receiving the greatest volume and diversity of Beijing’s public diplomacy activities in South and Central Asia. By Catherine Putz December 12, 2019 Nazarbayev attending the 2019 Belt and Road Forum in Beijing a month after resigning from the Kazakh presidency.Credit: Jason Lee/Pool Photo via APADVERTISEMENT Since its 2013 launch, China’s Belt and Road Initiative has become Beijing’s flagship foreign policy initiative. Sometimes it seems that all things are BRI and BRI is all things. As the authors of a new report on Chinese public diplomacy writ large note, “Beijing’s diplomacy… dwarfs its other public diplomacy tools in terms of sheer scale and visibility.” The BRI instigated a growth in the volume of financial diplomacy — encompassing infrastructure projects, budget support, debt relief and humanitarian assistance — particularly in South and Central Asia. Chinese funding of development projects pre-dates the initiative, of course, and in…

Cimisec.org
Posted by Guest Author By John HurshChina’s Maritime Silk Road ambitions suffered a setback after Tanzanian officials refused to budge over stalled negotiations to build what would be the largest deep-water port in Africa. Initially agreed to in 2013, the terms of the agreement remain a point of contention between Tanzanian President John Magufuli and China Merchants Holdings, the Chinese firm slated to construct the port and adjoining infrastructure. Tanzania suspended the project indefinitely in June, and it showed no signs of backing off in follow-up negotiations held in October. Instead, Tanzanian officials offered the Chinese firm a blunt ultimatum: accept our conditions or leave.Although China and Chinese firms remain the dominant investors in African infrastructure, and especially in ports, the Bagamoyo port dispute demonstrates that African leaders are becoming more demanding that Chinese-funded projects align with African development needs, or at least African polit…

foreignpolicy.comPakistani officials struggle to balance a difficult program against a vital alliance.BYMICHAEL KUGELMAN|DECEMBER 19, 2019, 2:10 PM Chinese Premier Li Keqiang (second from left) attends a meeting with Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan (third from right) at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China, on Oct. 8, 2019. YUKIE NISHIZAWA/AFP/GETTY IMAGES On Nov. 20, Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi boldly declared that the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC)—the Pakistani component of China’s broader Belt and Road Initiative—was the country’s “top priority.”Qureshi’s proclamation came just weeks after Yao Jing, China’s ambassador to Pakistan, announced that the first phase of CPEC—an infrastructure and connectivity project valued at $62 billion—was coming to a close, and that a second phase would soon begin.Over the last month, Chinese and Pakistani officials have been strikingly specific about what this second phase will entail for CPEC, a project tha…

December 30, 2019, 3:00 PM UTC SHANGHAI, Dec. 30, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- The 3rd Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) Forum of Tsinghua University, guided by the People's Government of Shanghai, Tsinghua University and the China Association for Social Workers, has been successfully held in Shanghai from December 19 to December 20. At the Forum, VeChain, together with DNV GL, The Belt and Road Initiative Research Institute of Tsinghua University, Industry Internet Research Institute (under the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of the People's Republic of China), Tus Data Asset, and China Silk Road Group Limited, established the The Belt and Road Initiative Blockchain Alliance (hereinafter referred to as "BRIBA"), to spur the development of the BRI by leveraging the blockchain technology.(News source frompeople.cn, a Chinese state owned media)
The BRI is a global development strategy adopted by the Chinese government, involving 136 countries and more than 30 interna…