Joseph S. Nye, Jr., a former US assistant secretary of defense and chairman of the US National Intelligence Council, is University Professor at Harvard University. He is the author of Is the American Century Over?
Project Syndicate - June 12, 2017
CAMBRIDGE – Last
month, Chinese President Xi Jinping presided over a heavily orchestrated
“Belt and Road” forum in Beijing. The two-day event attracted 29 heads
of state, including Russia’s Vladimir Putin, and 1,200 delegates from
over 100 countries. Xi called China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) the
“project of the century.” The 65 countries involved comprise two-thirds
of the world’s land mass and include some four and a half billion
people.
Originally announced
in 2013, Xi’s plan to integrate Eurasia through a trillion dollars of
investment in infrastructure stretching from China to Europe, with
extensions to Southeast Asia and East Africa, has been termed China’s
new Marshall Plan as well as its bid for a grand strategy. Some
observers also saw the Forum as part of Xi’s effort to fill the vacuum
left by Donald Trump’s abandonment of Barack Obama’s Trans-Pacific
Partnership trade agreement.
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