Richard Cullen on How the Chinese diaspora paved the way for BRI (Fridayeveryday)

"How the Chinese diaspora paved the way for BRI"
Richard Cullen
Fridayeveryday
Published online: October 2023

The biggest international trading venture in world history is 10 years old. 

But there’s an extraordinary tale behind the Belt and Road Initiative, or BRI. 

And that’s the story of the exceptional Chinese Diaspora experience, which laid the foundations for the infrastructure project’s success.  

This Chinese macro-migration endeavor, individual by individual, long predates the remarkable BRI, which is, today, measurably retracing the diaspora’s pioneering footsteps. Richard Cullen reports.

THIS YEAR, CHINA and the world are witnessing the 10th anniversary of the inauguration of the Belt and Road Initiative. The BRI is not a perfect success story, of course: nothing on this extraordinary scale could be. But the complications, obstacles and deficiencies have been worked-on as they have materialized.

Moreover, its overall positive, public infrastructure achievements, not least in Africa, have been extraordinary – and all secured within the span of a decade...Please click here for full article.

Yash Ghai: "Is Kenya in the danger of dependence on China?" (The Star)

"Is Kenya in the danger of dependence on China?"

Yash Ghai

The Star

7 July 2018

I am prompted to write this column by the remarkable statement of a scholar in Hong Kong on a recent visit there that China was on the verge of bankruptcy.

     Consequently countries that depend on loans from Chinese authorities are ill advised, as it is likely to be a device to trap the borrower. Some Hong Kong-based scholars were critical of another aspect: The integrity of Mainland China. It had reneged on the 1984 agreement between China and Britain guaranteeing Hong Kong’s autonomy as the condition for the transfer of sovereignty over Hong Kong back to China.

     Last year, when I was in Sri Lanka, I was told that country had made a serious error by moving its primary relations from India to China, for Chinese will exact a heavy price for its “grants or assistance”. I began to worry about the price we in Kenya will have to pay for huge loans and other “assistance” that our government had obtained from China — not least that has gone into the SGR, which the government never tires of advertising in the media as a great success. The Chinese government has also started making public declarations that it is “not increasing the public debt burden of African countries”... Click here to read the full text.