China's One Belt One Road Initiative is the New World Order Leading to Mutual Prosperity

         
Author Name ENOMOTO Shunichi (Consulting Fellow, RIETI)
Creation Date/NO. July 2017 17-P-021
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Abstract

This paper proposes a framework to analyze China's One Belt One Road Initiative (hereinafter, "Initiative") as the development of its foreign aid policy, and helps Japan take appropriate action toward China's New World Order. The major results of this study are as follows. First, the Initiative envisions a new world economic zone across the Eurasian continent based on land traffic systems, as alternatives to the world economy dominated by the United States, European Union (EU), and Japan based on marine traffic. Second, the Initiative, however, shares development-investment characteristics with other emerging donors, and tends to give priority to the short-term interests of China's state-owned enterprises, the project builders of China's foreign aid, over the recipient's long-term development. Third, China's aid to African nations in the 2000s is blamed as economic deprivation in the name of aid, and the same problem occurred in Sri Lanka (Laos has managed to control China's aid harmlessly and succeeded in generating profit). Fourth, Laos' success is owed not only to its solid governance and concrete development scheme but also to the multinational aid environment whereby it can receive economic aid from Thailand, Vietnam, Japan, and EU members, whereas Sri Lanka can only seek aid from China. Fifth, Japan needs to choose Initiative projects leading to the recipients' long-term development, and must keep a distance from the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) to strengthen the multinational aid environment in the One Belt One Road regions.