Xi Jinping's 2023: When China's BRI dream faced an Italian 'reality check'
Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Italy's Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni
Chinese leader Xi Jinping was seen doing away with his pursed lips and feigned smile twice this year. First in July, when a 100-year-old Henry Kissinger, the controversial US foreign policy wizard and architect of US-China ties visited Beijing. Secondly, in October during a summit in Beijing to celebrate 10 years of the Belt and Road Initiative, China's ambitious transcontinental trade project mired in accusations of exploitative practices.
Xi frequently broke into an uncharacteristic chuckle and threw expressions of diplomatic affection with Kissinger, who is credited with bringing China out of isolation in the 1970s.
China's President Xi Jinping with former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger during a meeting in Beijing on July 20, 2023 | AFP
But while a smiling Xi was "very glad to see" Kissinger in July 2023, the visit came in the backdrop of the 21st-century contest between Washington and Beijing for semiconductors,dubbed the 'Chip Wars'.
Weeks before Kissinger's Beijing visit, in June, the United States along with the Netherlands gave China's chipmaking capabilities a setback by imposing more restrictions on the sales of chipmaking equipment to the Chinese market. The measures were part of a broader strategy to prevent China from leveraging foreign technology to enhance its military capabilities.
Then in July, just two days after Kissinger's Beijing visit, the Biden administration gave another blow to China's chipmaking ambitions as a consensus emerged on the need for 'small yard, high fence' restrictions on chip exports.
Beijing's chipmaking ambitions are intricately linked with a wish to enmesh the world in Chinese-built infrastructure that includes not just roads and bridges but network equipment as well.
"We must march out, deepen international internet exchange and collaboration, and vigorously participate in the construction of 'One Belt, One Road'," Xi had declared in April 2016, three years after the Belt and Road Initiative was first launched.
The project originally devised to link East Asia and Europe through physical infrastructure, has since expanded to Africa, Oceania, and Latin America. But across continents, skepticism has replaced initial euphoria as there remains minimal accrual of benefits that Beijing initially promised.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping at the opening ceremony of a summit in Beijing to celebrate the Belt and Road Initiative on October 18, 2023 | Reuters
"The opaque nature of contracts did not allow for public scrutiny," Commodore R.S. Vasan (Retd.), Director General of Chennai Centre of China Studies told WION.
And this December, Italy under Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni notified Beijing that it was ceasing its participation in the BRI ahead of a deadline at the year's end.
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Italy was the only major Western nation to sign up for the BRI in 2019, a move heavily criticised by the West at the time.
Washington calls BRI an example of Beijing's "debt-trap diplomacy", as it involves unsustainably large projects that countries are unable to finance, giving Beijing leverage for its aims. India has denounced the project as it passes through parts of Jammu and Kashmir currently under illegal occupation by Pakistan and China.
Besides, only a fraction of the over$22 billion worth of investment in Italy promised by Xi in 2019 has materialised, according to an official readout from Italy's government.
Italian exports to China were worth $18.13bn last year, compared to $14.37bn in 2019. By contrast, Chinese exports to Italy rose to $63.57bn from $35bn over the same period, which European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen cited as an example of "clear imbalances and differences" that must be addressed.
"From all counts it is a reality check for China as well as the countries who are part of the BRI," Commodore Vasan added.
"The realisation that the funding benefited only the Chinese companies and hardly contributed to job generation in the destination countries is out there as the year closes," he said.
Italy under Meloni was wise to see the pitfalls of BRI and pulled out this year. But several countries are already indebted to China, possibly at a point of no return.
Did 2023 markthe beginning of the end of Xi Jinping's Belt and Road Initiative? The world will know soon enough.