Belt and Road Initiative is seen as an organization as well as a regime currently in the world, but as the understanding about Belt and Road Initiative is increasing gradually with the passage of time in people it’s raising questions. Unfortunately, people aren’t reading and learning about BRI instead people are just listening through random opinions of laymen, which isn’t correct.
Many opposition parties are also brainwashing people in many countries but now the main concerns are what are the perceptions about BRI? What are the challenges for China and its neighboring countries? How to understand the correct information and how to counter the propaganda? China’s massive infrastructure spending could reach new levels of commerce and growth for Asian and global economies together. Skeptics, on the other hand, fear that China is leading borrowing states into a debt trap.
Read more: A narrative of China’s debt trap diplomacy and BRI
Challenges for China & neighboring countries
Right after 3 years of BRI initiated the US just launched TPP Trans-Pacific Partnership along with 11 countries, as the US is scared of the rising of China with its ally Russia. US is in strong lobbying with India against BRI that includes 2 main tools: Fake News & terror financing by India (RAW/NDS) by using Afghanistan land in decades.
Afghanistan had been badly damaged & real facts had been concealed regarding Afghanistan by western and Indian media also it was used to disrupt the peace of the region, particularly Pakistan so that BRI can’t be executed the way it is required to be.
India is largely believed to be keeping the Maldives under its wings and some media reports suggest that the Maldivian government is handing over its country to China because of its debt. But Maldivian officials strongly denied such claims.”Being the chair of the public accounts committee for the last four years, being the person who sat in the chair to revive the budget for the last four years. I can assure the international community nothing like that is happening.
China has been very generous,” Ahmed Hussain, majority leader of the People’s Majlis, Maldives’ Parliament, told The Global Times. Moreover, we see there are negative perceptions seen from many other neighboring countries as a result of insecurities too because China is rapidly developing BRI and strengthening its loan diplomacy too.
EU DisinfoLab exposed India how it used the UN & the EU also exposed their huge number of fake media, fake human rights NGOs and fake news against Pakistan and China.
Read more: Analyzing PM Imran’s visit to China
Challenges for China & neighboring countries
Fake News which India is extremely high at it, invests a huge amount in fake news regarding Pakistan as a terrorist state, Pakistan involved in terror financing and Pakistan destabilizing the region. Pakistan’s counter to Indian fake news is extremely weak because Pakistan has no policy in lobbying which India already have decades ago. In Pakistan, only a few journalists voluntarily counter the fake news and consider national interest first. Whereas Indian anchors are paid specifically to create insane news against Pakistan, OBOR, & China. This fake news is so damaging that whenever you google about Silkroad you will only find negative news.
Terror Financing had always been done by the Indian intelligence agency known as RAW NDS but in return, they blame Pakistan falsely that Pakistan finance it also they have influenced so much on IMF because of their policies that Pakistan for no reason is suffering. They blame Pakistan for using Afghan soil & other radicals for financing terror, which is extremely insane why would Pakistan use these radicals to damage their own country and kill their own people. India had been so insecure about CPEC that they on and off used their spies to disrupt it they would use Afghanistan, Iran & entered Balochistan further moved to Sindh province as well.
One of the spie name is “KHULBHUSHAN JHADHAV” His cover name was Hussain Mubarak Patel he lived as a businessman in Iran. He was sentenced to death by military law but India took the case to ICJ and tried to prove him an ex-military officer now civilian. He has clearly confessed that his work was to disrupt along with BLA (Baloch Subnational) they are an Anti-Pakistan group. Every day Indian media dedicate hours to do propaganda against Pakistan & China they prove every disputed territory to be theirs like LADAKH and Indian Occupied Kashmir.
Now there was a turning point in Afghanistan that US forces left Afghanistan and US stance over the Taliban looks really confusing as if they are not clear themselves what to say. India and US are really not happy with the evacuation of American forces because it is the start of peace in the region, it will break US hegemony that is why US came with a new senate bill against Pakistan & other countries for sanctions as again Pakistan is being made scapegoat despite the fact that we are hosting 1,435,445 Afghan Refugees.
Read more: FWO: A Symbol of Pak-China Friendship!
Perceptions and media narrative on China and BRI
Conclusions can be reached concerning the notion of the BRI consisting of a set of “economic corridors” based on cross-border transportation links (National Development and Reform Commission [NDRC], 2015). Small (2020: 20) points out that despite preconceptions that CPEC’s main focus was intended to be cross-border railway and pipeline links from Gwadar to Xinjiang province in northwest China, “The CPEC plan that emerged from the consultation process did not really resemble a corridor at all.”
Chinese planners soon realized that the logistical difficulties and high cost of building cross-border infrastructure links through the Himalayas would make such projects economically unsustainable, and quietly abandoned them. This was despite a barrage of media and scholarly outputs about the need to solve the so-called “Malacca dilemma,” defined as a possible maritime blockade of Chinese oil supplies by transporting oil from the Indian Ocean across Pakistan to China.
In fact, as Garlick (2018) demonstrates, the Chinese are not planning to build a Gwadar–Kashgar oil pipeline, due to its lack of viability in terms of both economic and security. Indeed, risk analyses by Chinese scholars have revealed the seriousness of the potential threats (Zang and Zhu, 2017; Zheng, 2016). Instead, maintaining relatively good relations with Pakistan to ensure a geopolitical counterweight to India continues to take priority in Beijing’s calculations, as was the case before the advent of CPEC in 2015.
The construction of energy and transportation infrastructure takes pride of place in many of the over sixty Asian and European countries included in the initiative. Chinese-built ports, roads, railways, dams, and power plants in economically developing countries such as Pakistan, Cambodia, and Myanmar are bold manifestations of China’s influence and capabilities. At the same time, the long-term impacts of the sudden explosion of Chinese construction projects in the developing world are not yet entirely clear.
Read more: China and Pakistan: Partners in a shared future!
Comments on previous media bias
Surprisingly the west and India particularly are so biased towards Pakistan that they even can’t compare Pakistan with any country whose GDP is at least matching with Pakistan. For Instance:
Myanmar (Burma)/Gross domestic product
76.19 billion USD (2020)
Cambodia/Gross domestic product
25.29 billion USD (2020)
Pakistan/Gross domestic product
263.7 billion USD (2020)
There’s only one reason to do it so that Pakistan can be shown as inferior among states as Pakistan geo-strategic location is very important for BRI and Gwadar Port’s importance can not be denied for a successful BRI.
Some comments of international media by influentials over the withdrawal of US military and China’s connection to Afghanistan
After the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan not the only US but west and India were shaken, they are still in shock. Ret. Gen. Joseph Votel, a former CENTCOM commander, told VOA it should come as no surprise that both China and Russia will want to “fill the void” created by the U.S. troop withdrawal.
For years, China has been expanding its economic power through “Belt and Road” initiatives across the globe, providing affordable infrastructure in the short-term, in exchange for long-term debt repayment plans that leave countries more dependent on China’s authoritarian government.
Read more: China: Lynchpin and second home to HBL
Beijing has already said that it wants to expand the program to Afghanistan
China opposed the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan nearly 20 years ago, but now also opposes a quick American withdrawal which, Beijing says, could leave the country in even more turmoil.
China’s support for Belt and Road Initiative projects in Afghanistan could allow Beijing to create an overland connection to another element of the BRI, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor which links a strategic port on the Arabian Sea to highways that lead north across the Himalayas.
“It’s really ironic,” Bowman told VOA. “We’re reducing our deterrence of China by facilitating a withdrawal that people said we had to do to increase our deterrence of China.”
Ariel Cohen, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Atlantic Council, told VOA Mandarin this week that “China and Russia benefit from America’s presence in Afghanistan. They benefit because the Taliban, al Qaida and ISIS were constrained by Americans.”
Robert Ross, a professor of political science at Boston College, told VOA Mandarin via phone that “the Chinese certainly (have) no interest in seeing Afghanistan become a revitalized center of terrorism, particularly given their concern about Islamic terrorism in China.” Beijing’s harsh crackdown on its western Uyghur population was prompted in part by a series of Islamist-inspired attacks.“China fears that its Uighurs may both draw strength from their fellow Uighurs in Afghanistan, who may supply terrorists and others to make life difficult for the Chinese. The Chinese can be expected to be more active in Afghanistan,” he said. “But Russia will be unlikely to do much. The memory of its humiliation there is still fresh.”
He suggests it’s likely that the Chinese will take a two-way approach, pumping up the anti-terrorism initiative with the SCO while simultaneously working independently with Afghans to build a lasting economic initiative.
The writer is a Journalist and anchor Person of current affairs. She is currently enrolled in the Master’s Program scholar Renmin University China as a global politics student. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Global Village Space