Has China’s Global Development Initiative replaced its Belt and Road?

September 7 marks ten years since Xi Jinping first unveiled the landmark Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), one of the world’s largest and most ambitious infrastructure projects. In 2021, the Chinese president came to the table with the announcement of another international economic program: The Global Development Initiative (GDI).

USSC Research Associate Samuel Garrett discusses how the GDI compares to the decade-old BRI, and where it fits into China’s broader strategy for enhancing its regional and global economic influence.

What is China's Global Development Initiative?

The Global Development Initiative (GDI) is a Chinese umbrella program unifying various development projects, funding grants, and forums in developing countries. Chinese President Xi Jinping announced the GDI at the United Nations in September 2021, ostensibly to get progress on the Sustainable Development Goals back on track and to promote economic prosperity in the Global South through cooperation programs and capacity building. The initiative commits billions of dollars to China’s South-South Cooperation Assistance Fund, new development projects and assistance, and includes an official emphasis on mutually beneficial economic programs.

The GDI sits alongside two other Chinese ‘Global Initiatives’: the Global Security Initiative (GSI) announced in April 2022, which emphasises security as a precondition for sustainable development, and the Global Civilization Initiative (GCI) announced in March 2023, which promotes non-interference, inter-cultural exchanges, and the right of individual states to determine the nature of their own modernisation based on cultural, historical and ‘civilisational’ differences.

Much like China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) at its inception, for now the GDI is a relatively nebulous concept with a vague remit. Compared to the BRI’s scale, and despite the fanfare surrounding the first batch of GDI projects, the GDI remains relatively small in scope. The first round of GDI projects included food for 3600 Nepali children, a tablet PC project in Bolivia, and firefighting capacity in Mongolia. However, considering the BRI's links with poor project management, corruption, and Chinese strategic interests, developed and developing countries alike are watching to see how this new potential “mega” program evolves.

How is China's GDI linked with its regional and global economic strategy?

China does not describe the GDI as altruistic charity but as a series of “global development partnerships” for mutual benefit. Global development strategies such as the GDI carry normative power to set the standards and tone around rights and governance. By establishing the Global Initiatives (Development, Security, and Civilization) which emphasise non-interference, China is seeking to create a counter-narrative to the US-backed ‘rules-based international order’.

By establishing the Global Initiatives (Development, Security, and Civilization) which emphasise non-interference, China is seeking to create a counter-narrative to the US-backed ‘rules-based international order’ approach.

The GDI centres on a state-centric view of the right to economic development as a foundational human right above all others, one which focuses on the collective good rather than the individual. This challenges US values of individualised human rights and development priorities targeted at individual autonomy and the promotion of democracy. The Global Civilization Initiative backs this difference as one born of cultural differences that should be preserved.

The perception of a normative threat posed by the GDI to existing human rights structures and the wider international rules-based order has likely fed the relative public silence by the United States and its partners, including Australia, in response to the GDI. Development, which was once a field for cooperation, is now seen as one of competition.

Is the GDI an evolution of China’s Belt and Road Initiative?

China is widely promoting the GDI, with it largely replacing mentions of the BRI in official speeches.

Although the GDI is different to the BRI in scale and focus, it allows China to reduce the scale of its development investments globally while continuing to engage with the Global South.

The GDI involves more direct government oversight than the BRI by channelling funds through the government’s China International Development Cooperation Agency, rather than private loans by banks — a recognition that BRI spending resulted in unsustainable debt, with over US$78b in Chinese loans renegotiated or written off in the last three years.

With the BRI bogged down by the pandemic, China’s own economy slowing, and less freely available credit, the focus of the GDI on smaller-scale grants, capacity building, and training programs avoids the staggering costs of major infrastructure in the BRI, especially given the struggling state of the Chinese economy. Moreover, China’s GDI, GSI, and GCI collectively advance a wider project to rewrite global norms and US conceptions of rights and economic development.

How have Indo-Pacific countries responded to the GDI?

In many regions, the BRI has been tainted by perceptions of debt traps and poor standards. Yet the response to the GDI has been largely positive from developing countries frustrated over the West’s weak vaccine rollout and pandemic assistance.

In many regions, the BRI has been tainted by perceptions of debt traps and poor standards. Yet the response to the GDI has been largely positive from developing countries frustrated over the West’s weak vaccine rollout and pandemic assistance.

More than 60 countries have joined China’s ‘Group of Friends of the Global Development Initiative’, many of them developing countries in Asia and Africa. The United States, Australia, and Western European countries have been more cautious, wary of the potential emergence of a new BRI that comes with unsustainable levels of debt, influences foreign governments or more broadly challenges their conception of human rights and development by eroding existing norms.

Some major Indo-Pacific players, such as Indonesia, reportedly harbour reservations about the Initiative, having experienced issues with BRI cost overruns, delays and lending issues. Nevertheless, all 10 ASEAN members, including Indonesia, are now part of the Group of Friends, and Southeast Asia as a region will benefit from the largest number of initial GDI projects. However, the lack of detail around the initiative — even in the first batch of projects to be announced — has made it easier for China to garner early support, similarly to the early trajectory of the BRI.

However, there is reticence towards the broader normative project within which the GDI sits. India was a notable opponent of the inclusion of the phrase “shared vision for a common future” in a 2020 United Nations declaration, rhetoric associated with Chinese foreign policy including the GDI. How countries around the world balance their desire for development with reservations over the influence it will grant China, will define their engagement with the GDI in the years ahead.