\\\"One Belt, One Road,\\\" or one heck of a fix?

Unlike India and Japan, China did not help us during our independence; yet, over  40 years, this one bilateral relationship of Bangladesh has undergone a remarkable somersault, with both countries and many of their social groups bridging the gulf far more robustly and legitimately than, say, Bangladesh and Pakistan or Bangladeshis and Pakistanis. Like India and Japan, China too is rearranging its priorities according to its drastically altered global ranking: the Cold War kept China's global leadership at bay, but when it ended, China's climb up that ladder has been in historical leaps and bounds.

With them have been resurrected prior Chinese claims to world leadership, with the "One Belt, One Road" (OBOR) catch-all slogan capturing the essential thrusts: on the one hand is the Silk Road Economic Belt running across Eurasia, and institutionalised, for instance, through the Shanghai Framework Organisation that courteously but effectively replaced Russia behind the steering wheel; and the Maritime Silk Route, encompassing the South China Sea, South Pacific, and the Indian Ocean, connecting the Silk Road Economic Belt through a South and Southeast flank. It is not quite the Mackinder Heartland thesis, let alone Mahan's sea-power argument, but supposed parallels point to why China cannot be excluded from any country's future growth trajectory: since the 1980s, China has captured world markets, built an unprecedented trillion-dollar treasure chest through surpluses wrought by mercantilist policies, and now seeks the pay-offs through investment, extraction, and exploitation (and even more hopefully, more economic liberalisation).

One consequence is that Bangladesh cannot be a determinant of China's policy interests (as indeed no single country can): each is only a cog in a machine that single-handedly conquered the U.S. market, evicted Japan from the second economic-sized slot before targeting the largest, diverted U.S. (and European) investors from the rest of the world to build its own infrastructures, thrown its own state-run gargantuan enterprises into competitive global markets, and, if not building trade surpluses unabashedly with cash-surplus countries, then overwhelming cash-strapped countries with ample largesse, either to extract minerals or to build the kind of dependency Alfred Hirschman first observed of German Economics/Labour Minister Hjalmar Schacht in East Europe under Adolf Hitler.

Bangladesh nicely fitted into China's "strings of pearls" doctrine, a string of military and economic outposts between the Middle East oil-producers and the voracious new consumer, China. Protection at certain choke-points, like the straits of Hormuz and Malacca, strengthened China's sea-port development in Pakistan (Gwadar) in order to feed new land routes to China through war-torn Baluchistan and Afghanistan; and through Myanmar and/or Bangladesh. These thoughts culminated in such other networks as the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor and the Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar Economic Corridor (BCIM-EC).

Spin-offs for Bangladesh included China's Harbour Engineering Company upgrading Chittagong port, leading to the expression of interests in Sonadia sea-port building across the barren island, or alternatively in Payra. While these sea-ports still remain on China's wish-list and as a Bangladeshi pipe-dream, China at least clinched the specific Karnaphuli Tunnel and Padma Bridge projects, not to mention significant telecommunications awards.

China Communication Construction Company won the two-lane, $1-billion Karnaphuli project during Sheikh Hasina's June 2014 visit, scheduled to begin work this year and be complete during 2019. It would develop the Dhaka-Cox's Bazar highway and feed into the Asian Highway Network later. One-third of the money would go into land-purchase.

Even more stunning (and controversial) was wresting the 5.15 km Padma Bridge (with 15.1 km of approach roads) from the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, and Japan International Cooperation Agency for China in July 2015.  It entails a 4-lane upper road segment and a rail segment below, between Lohajong in Munshigana, to Madaripur/Shariatpur. Embarrassed by the World Bank's corruption charges, the government grabbed China Railway Engineering Corporation's interest-free loan, feeding into China's wildest dream of managing an alternate development banking institution than the U.S.-controlled World Bank.

China's Asian Infrastructure and Investment Bank (AIIB) was proposed in 2013, and by June 2015, more than 50 countries had signed the Articles of Agreement, including India, almost all in Asia, as well as Australia, New Zealand, and Israel. With China holding 30 per cent of the shares and Bangladesh 0.67 per cent, the institution is important for not including the United States (much as the U.S. Trans-Pacific Partnership did not include China), though divisiveness has been modified through the interest of a number of European countries, including Great Britain.

For a country not receptive of its independence, Bangladesh jumping  from a hallowed western-oriented ship to a Chinese counterpart that threatens neither India (which is on board) nor the United States (since so many closer U.S. allies have also joined), may be a preview of unfolding atmospherics. It shows Bangladesh toying with the kind of a game that must be played when multiple options prevail, the no-frills, self-seeking approach that typically wins the deal: it was a fitting reversal to the World Bank Padma embarrassment, raising a question if the aging financial institution can be of any other Bangladesh relevance; but it was soberly managed by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina  at the U.N. General Assembly visit during September 2015, when both Chinese and U.S. (and European and "northern"/"western") interests were amply boosted.

Nudging the China card nonetheless fuels a silently tempestuous U.S. relationship, the subject of the next article. Until then, whether we like or not, China is in the ballpark to stay; and though keeping a distance from any dragons, especially a fiery one, a lesson many mothers teach their children, the setting here may be more conducive to play than staying away.

The writer is Professor of International Relations, formerly in Universidad Iberoamerica, Mexico City.

 [email protected]