The West needs a collective approach to China
Photo by Ágoston Fung
For decades, experts have warned that China’s rise is the most important geopolitical factor. Today, we find that China's power, and its desire to expand it, is having very serious consequences for the UK and the West. And yet, we are not doing anything about it.
More so than its partners in Moscow and Tehran, Beijing is proactive in its approach to shaping the global system, using its diplomatic prowess and economic statecraft to expand its influence and shape global norms that serve its foreign policy goals. Its Belt and Road Initiative is the key to this strategy, looking to put China at the centre of the global economy to strengthen its geopolitical power, leverage authority over the policies of developing nations, and increasingly, build a more globally operational military, all to foster global norms in its own image.
But the success of the BRI is as much a Western failure as a Chinese success; we have simply failed to match China. Indeed, between 2007 and 2020, China provided 2.5 times more development finance for infrastructure than all other nations combined, including in regions with historical UK and US influence, such as the Caribbean.
More recently, the Belt and Road Initiative has started to shift away from enormous infrastructure projects and onto greener programmes, which fits neatly with the priorities of developing countries. At the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation in 2024, President Xi pledged to back more infrastructure programmes following a slow-down during the pandemic, by increasing funding by $51 billion for infrastructure to create over a million jobs. Through this, Beijing is solidifying its position as the partner of choice for many nations, ultimately causing security challenges for the West.
Central for China to create a world order in its image and dominate the Indo-Pacific is by expanding its military reach. It has the world’s largest navy numerically, but lags behind the West in terms of military bases abroad, with its only overseas base sitting in Djibouti. Consequently, China is increasingly looking to exploit its economic statecraft to achieve its military goals. According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, BRI maritime facilities are built to specifications ensuring that docking space is large enough to accommodate Chinese warships, allowing the Chinese military to “transform itself from a force with limited regional power-projection capabilities to a military capable of global expeditionary operations with a true ‘blue water’ navy.”
China’s military will be able to operate effectively in more regions, challenging Western militaries and cutting off global supply chains by land and by sea. Currently, it is only the US that is attuned to the threat that China poses. There is a bipartisan consensus in the US that “China is not a future threat; China is a threat today.” The UK government, however, is asleep. As China becomes more assertive, we will look back and wish we had done more to counter it.
The West needs to restore its position as partner of choice in the developing world by putting a better offer on the table in terms of infrastructure development.
Announced in 2022, the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment looks to unlock $600 billion in public and private capital to fund high-quality infrastructure projects, but has lacked speed and is divided by a plethora of different initiatives from the West.
If implemented with sufficient scale as a dedicated collective approach, the PGII has the potential to offer something better than the BRI, due to its transparency and lower ESG risks than what often arise from Chinese financing. The United Nations has stated that good quality infrastructure has the capability to affect 92% of targets across all Sustainable Development Goals, demonstrating the positive knock-on effect that the PGII could have in re-establishing the West as a trusted partner.
Of course, the pooling of Western resources does come with political complexities. Nevertheless, the new Trump administration may be receptive to the idea of European support to tackle China’s growing global military presence. Indeed, some Republicans in the United States are calling for strong collective development assistance as a way to combat China’s growing influence. Mitch McConnell, one of the Republican Party’s most senior senators, recently wrote: “the United States cannot neglect the role of foreign aid … It is past time to integrate foreign assistance more deliberately into great-power competition—for example, by working with allies to present credible alternatives to China’s Belt and Road Initiative.” Likewise, in Europe, senior politicians have started to call for a Western strategy vis-a-vis China.
Britain now needs to follow suit. As a recent Coalition for Global Prosperity report demonstrates, a collective Western approach to combating China’s global influence is paramount to UK and Western security; and this is something that our MPs have to push for. We need to understand the threat posed by Beijing and implement solutions, rather than ignoring the challenge altogether.