1. The Silk Road Economic Belt dissected KEY FINDINGS The Silk Road Economic Belt: • is a loose and still-evolving international economic cooperation model that could catalyse development and integration in Eurasia and contribute to mitigating security threats—yet its effectiveness and longevity remain to be seen; • addresses a vast Eurasian critical infrastructure and connectivity deficit that has few or no other large-scale financial alternatives. It has largely been received enthusiastically, although there remain concerns about its feasibility, geopolitical underpinnings and long-term political implications; • is driven by a wide range of Chinese national interests: economic, diplomatic, financial, and geopolitical. These include enhancing domestic economic security, increasing China’s global financial clout, mitigating security threats, and garnering strategic space for itself in Eurasia; • will, over time, serve as an impetus driving China to become more proactive in shaping global governance and regional and local state security affairs, as China’s interests expand in line with its overseas economic footprint; • fits into China’s security concepts, which stress common security through economic cooperation. It could become a cornerstone of an economically more autonomous Eurasia—and Asian security cooperation; • may have overestimated local institutional capacity and could be bogged down by geopolitical competition and China’s own financial overextension; and • requires greater in-depth analysis of the political and socioeconomic dynamics throughout Eurasia. The Belt and Road Initiative(BRI) is arguably China’s single most ambitious foreign policy programme since the People’s Republic was founded in 1949. 1 The initiative, introduced in September–October 2013, is a long-term infrastructural development, production and economic integration vision—primarily, but not exclusively, targeting the Eurasian landmass(in this report‘Eurasia’ refers to the combined landmass of Europe and Asia). Albeit to a smaller degree, according to some quasi-official maps the BRI also intends to connect with: Africa, mostly North, North East and South Africa(South Africa is a pivotal state in some of the designs of the Road); Oceania; and even Latin America. The BRI has two major components: the land-based Silk Road Economic Belt(the‘Belt’), and the sea-based 21st Century Maritime Silk Road(the ‘Road’). This report focuses only on the Eurasian continent-focused Belt. In subsection 1.1 official Chinese narratives regarding the Belt are compared and contrasted against the various understandings and general concerns of stakeholders. Subsection 1.2 considers China’s motivations for initiating the Belt, meaning the drivers and underlying interests. The Belt is then placed in the context of China’s evolving security concept in subsection 1.3, to assess how it is being integrated. The authors hope that this approach will provide Belt stakeholders and other interested parties with an updated, comprehensive and nuanced understanding of the broader Belt security context and drivers. While the focus of the report is on the Belt, the BRI is nevertheless referenced where due. This is because( a ) the nature and purpose of the Belt are intertwined with the initiative as a whole: both the Belt and the Road were introduced as complementing 1 Reference to the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Road collectively has shifted from‘One Belt, One Road’(OBOR) to the‘Belt and Road Initiative’(BRI). The reason for this probably lies in retrospection: the previous title evoked notions of a single, land-based‘belt’, i.e. route, and a single sea-based‘road’, i.e. sea lane, instead of the multitude that it intends to comprise. However, the new title still carries some notion of singularity. The BRI is neither really a‘belt’ nor a‘road’. China had the‘misfortune’ that the United States had already used‘New Silk Road’ in 2011 before it could.