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posted by martyb on Tuesday May 16 2017, @09:08AM   Printer-friendly
from the teamwork++ dept.

China's President has pledged $124 billion for a new "Silk Road" connecting Asia, Africa, and Europe:

Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday urged major multilateral institutions to join his new Belt and Road Initiative, stressing the importance of rejecting protectionism in seeking global economic growth.

Addressing other world leaders at a summit on the initiative in Beijing, Xi said it was necessary to coordinate policies with the development goals of institutions including the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), ASEAN, African Union and the European Union.

Xi pledged $124 billion on Sunday for his new Silk Road which aims to bolster China's global leadership ambitions by expanding links between Asia, Africa, Europe and beyond, as U.S. President Donald Trump promotes "America First".

What is OBOR?

No one is totally sure. At the most basic level, One Belt, One Road (OBOR) is a collection of interlinking trade deals and infrastructure projects throughout Eurasia and the Pacific, but the definition of what exactly qualifies as an OBOR project or which countries are even involved in the initiative is incredibly fuzzy. "It means everything and it means nothing at the same time," said Christopher Balding, a professor of economics at Peking University. [...] According to Chinese state media, some $1 trillion has already been invested in OBOR, with another several trillion due to be invested over the next decade.

Fuzzier story at CNN. More at Wikipedia.

Related: China Plans World's Longest Tunnel
China to Spend $182 Billion on Network Infrastructure
China Invests $45 Billion in Megacity Project
China Finances and Builds $13 Billion Railway in Kenya
China Plans $503 Billion Investment in High-Speed Rail by 2020


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  • (Score: 2) by gawdonblue on Tuesday May 16 2017, @11:11AM (9 children)

    by gawdonblue (412) on Tuesday May 16 2017, @11:11AM (#510482)

    So China is spending the equivalent of the next 8 countries worth on building up trade. It could have been on arms instead. Which one will pay off?

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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday May 16 2017, @11:45AM (4 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday May 16 2017, @11:45AM (#510491) Journal

    So China is spending the equivalent of the next 8 countries worth on building up trade.

    I know this is meant merely as literary flourish, but the US and EU probably spend more each on trade than China does, being considerably larger economic zones, and all of this government-level spending on trade is dwarfed by private trade-related spending from any one of the three.

    • (Score: 2) by butthurt on Tuesday May 16 2017, @01:42PM (3 children)

      by butthurt (6141) on Tuesday May 16 2017, @01:42PM (#510523) Journal

      What do you mean by "larger"?

      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday May 16 2017, @11:05PM (2 children)

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday May 16 2017, @11:05PM (#510821) Journal

        What do you mean by "larger"?

        Larger GDP.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 17 2017, @04:43AM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 17 2017, @04:43AM (#510922)

          You would probably like to still revisit that statement.

          Country         GDP     Running Sum
          Germany         3.356   3.356
          UK              2.849   6.205
          France          2.422   8.627
          Spain           1.199   9.826
          Italy           1.815   11.641
          Netherlands     0.7525  12.3935
          Switzerland     0.6647  13.0582
          Belgium         0.454   13.5122
          Austria         0.3741  13.8863
          Portugal        0.1989  14.0852
          -------------
          China           10.87
          EU              16.518
          USA             17.95

          So they aren't really "considerably" larger economic zones. Keeping aside USA, the next 5 countries in EU altogether are barely larger than China. And don't get me started on area of economic zones, or even population.
          This image [wikipedia.org] captures this very well.

          Secondly, GDP doesn't measure living costs which is almost 200% lower in China than the topmost EU country - Germany. While this means purchasing power parity of Germany is bigger than China, what it really means is that number of $124 billion is actually a lot more when adjusted to ppp.

          So OP is correct to say that China is investing more in building up trade than European countries selling arms.

          To OP, you are wrong to say that selling arms is not investing in building up trade. The West owes everything it has today to investing in arms, including NASA, the Internet, almost all of the economy after WW1 and most importantly, the colonial loot.

          • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday May 17 2017, @01:01PM

            by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday May 17 2017, @01:01PM (#511054) Journal
            Your chart shows both other regions as more than 50% larger. So yes, they are considerably larger. Plus, we need to remember that Chinese GDP is even less based on reality due to the complete lack of accountability of the Chinese government generating those figures. There's something to it, since we see enormous activity in the country, but we have even less of an idea of how much it has been exaggerated than we do with the US and EU.
  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by ikanreed on Tuesday May 16 2017, @03:24PM (3 children)

    by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday May 16 2017, @03:24PM (#510554) Journal

    History has shown that the largest economies can shift rapidly to being the largest military, without requiring huge standing armies.

    The USA's inverse approach of sinking endless amounts of potential economic growth into military forces essentially forces a political necessity of wasting that military wealth on unnecessary, meaningless wars.

    The end game for every empire like that in history is to start dumping fiscal assets into mercenaries, and then being dumbfounded when the mercenaries switch sides to the people who want to plunder you a generation or two later.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 16 2017, @03:54PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 16 2017, @03:54PM (#510560)

      History has shown that the largest economies can shift rapidly to being the largest military, without requiring huge standing armies.

      Can't build 4000 nukes in 30 minutes though.

      • (Score: 4, Insightful) by ikanreed on Tuesday May 16 2017, @03:58PM

        by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday May 16 2017, @03:58PM (#510562) Journal

        China has about 5% as many nukes as the US, but it's almost as much deterrent for us to want to not want to fuck with them, the intricacies of Sino-Russian geopolitics notwithstanding.

    • (Score: 2) by GungnirSniper on Wednesday May 17 2017, @04:02AM

      by GungnirSniper (1671) on Wednesday May 17 2017, @04:02AM (#510915) Journal

      We can't build roads because that will induce demand, man.